In a perfect world, you would get better every day. You would become smarter, make more money, lose weight, grow your business and enjoy clearer skin 7 days a week. It’s what competitors want to do. You have these kinds of growth desires both at work and in your personal life. They tend to be even stronger in the months leading up to your high school reunions.
But at times you will face headwinds that won’t allow for growth. Not even Bob Seger can run against them. These headwinds won’t allow you to hit your goals, increase revenue, lose weight, or improve on whatever metrics you are using to measure yourself.
This is because sometimes the prevailing conditions work against you. These conditions can come in various forms, including the following:
- Interest rates
- Pandemics
- Elections
- Seasons
- Weather
- Fuel Prices
- Illness
- Injury
- Cost of Goods
- Scarcity of Labor
- Venus in retrograde
- Holidays
- Recessions
- Depressions
- Travel
- Embargoes
- Bird Flu (Good luck with those Easter egg dye kits, PAAS…)
These factors can freeze industries and opportunities. They are abnormalities that create additional uncontrolled variables in your success experiments. But they are typically temporary. Unless your category has been totally disrupted. (Make sure you don’t mistake a headwind for category disruption. Or you will find yourself working at Blockbuster, waiting for customers who are never coming back.)
Remember the life-saving advice not to swim against the forces of a riptide. Apply the same advice to headwind conditions. Don’t tire yourself out trying to fight a force you can’t beat. Instead, conserve your energy. Wait it out. Or escape the headwind by moving to a different product, category, opportunity or goal.
Key Takeaway
Set lofty growth and improvement goals for yourself and your organization. But recognize when conditions create headwinds that make them difficult or impossible to achieve. Those conditions are almost always temporary. Adjust your expectations. And prepare to resume your march towards your big hairy, audacious goals as soon as the headwinds abate.
*If you know someone who could benefit from this message, please share it with them.
+For more of the best life lessons I have learned check out my book, What Does Your Fortune Cookie Say? from Ripples Media.
Adam Albrecht Blog 