As an entrepreneur, you face many challenges and opportunities every day. How do you make the right decisions to grow your business and achieve your goals? Here are some tips and tools to help you improve your strategic thinking and decision making skills.
Before you make any decision, you need to have a clear vision of what you want to achieve and why. Your vision is your long-term goal that guides your actions and motivates you. Your values are your principles and beliefs that shape your culture and ethics. Having a vision and values statement can help you align your decisions with your purpose and identity.
No company operating today is completely sure of the future. Even if you have a clearly defined vision, every company needs to reexamine its plans in this period of uncertainty. Entrepreneurs must be ready to run the marathon. Before you start running a marathon, you must have trained very hard and more importantly, you must have developed the mindset that will give you the strength to endure a long run. Even if technology completely changes in the future, it would be good to benefit from the power of mindset by making the best moves in the "manageable" area will be the most effective value.
Tomar decisiones efectivas para hacer crecer un negocio es un proceso importante y desafiante. Considero que la parte principal de todo emprendimiento es establecer metas claras, que nos ayudara a definir las mismas y los objetivos de la empresa.
Once you have a vision and values, you need to identify the problem or opportunity that you need to address. What is the situation, the context, and the stakeholders involved? What are the objectives, constraints, and risks that you need to consider? What are the criteria that you will use to evaluate the possible solutions? Defining the problem and the criteria can help you focus your attention and avoid distractions.
The lean startup model starts with a problem: not an idea, but an issue that your (prospective) customer base is (hopefully) facing. Starting from a problem is great: the likelihood of your solution bringing a concrete upside is that much greater. That being said, you can never fully know if any decision is the right one. Ford famously said: "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses". Starting with the problem is one piece of the equation - then you have to add a critical leap to it. And then not hesitate to test and pivot, putting your ego in check...
The problem needs to be defined and more importantly, you need to able to deliver not only a solution, but the best solution in the market. Talk to your potential customers, explore the objectives, and see how you can take advantage to win.
Siempre que sea posible, se deben basar las decisiones en datos y hechos concretos en lugar de suposiciones o corazonadas. Utilizar métricas y análisis para respaldar las elecciones y monitorear los resultados para realizar ajustes si es necesario.
When you're an entrepreneur, making decisions to grow your business means making decisions in the best interest of your customers. That’s the crucial bit. The better you listen to your customers, the better you understand what truly matters to them, the better positioned you will be to make the right decisions. In other words, decision-making as an entrepreneur starts with asking the right questions and being a good listener
After you have defined the problem and the criteria, you need to generate and analyze different alternatives. How can you solve the problem or seize the opportunity? What are the pros and cons of each option? How do they compare to each other and to the criteria? Generating and analyzing alternatives can help you expand your perspective and find creative solutions.
Once you have generated and analyzed alternatives, you need to choose and implement the best solution. How will you make the final decision? Will you use your intuition, logic, or data? Will you consult others or decide alone? How will you communicate and execute the decision? How will you measure and monitor the results? Choosing and implementing the best solution can help you take action and achieve your desired outcomes.
Analiza los recursos disponibles. Evalúa los recursos disponibles en tu negocio (como capital, personal, tecnología y tiempo). Considera cómo puedes aprovechar al máximo tus recursos existentes y qué recursos adicionales podrían ser necesarios para implementar tus decisiones de crecimiento.
After you have chosen and implemented the best solution, you need to learn and improve from feedback. How did the decision work out? What were the positive and negative consequences? What did you do well and what can you do better? How can you apply the lessons learned to future decisions? Learning and improving from feedback can help you grow and adapt to changing circumstances.
To help you with the decision making process, you can use tools and frameworks that can simplify and structure your thinking. For example, you can use SWOT analysis to assess your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. You can use SMART goals to set specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound objectives. You can use decision matrices to compare and rank alternatives based on multiple criteria. Using tools and frameworks can help you organize and visualize your information and options.
Algo que funciona es identificar y evaluar diferentes opciones y estrategias para el crecimiento de tu negocio. Debemos considerar pros y contras de cada opción, así como su viabilidad, rentabilidad y riesgos asociados. El FODA (fortalezas, debilidades, oportunidades y amenazas) nos puede ayudar para evaluar opciones de manera más estructurada.