Are You Ready? How prepared is your company for addressing the challenges and opportunities of the next decade?

Think about what has changed for your company in the last ten years. Think about your customers, their needs and how you conduct business with them. How about your supply chain? And consider how your employees think and work differently now. Now consider your own thinking. How have you kept up with all these changes? And how have you kept ahead of them? How does reflecting on this past decade help you understand better how to succeed over the next ten years?

Start by looking at where you are - and how you got here. Which decisions proved brilliant - and which ones would you change if you could? If you were lucky - how did you prepare yourself and your organization to be in a position to take advantage of the opportunities you connected with. And if you were not so lucky - how prepared were you to deal with the adversity that is unavoidable in business - and in life? It was Louis Pasteur who noted that "chance only favors the prepared mind."

It is impossible to be prepared for everything. We might be prepared for what we expect - but how do you prepare for the unexpected? And what are the chances you will get this right? It's a safe bet to say that luck eventually changes. The question is, how prepared are you?

When it comes to your company, the chances are pretty good that if you have been dealing with the volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity on your own - you have placed yourself and your company at a disadvantage compared to those who have pooled together their best resources to come up with solutions to the challenges they face. In part this is because none of us are as smart as all of us.

When we are forging ahead alone we tend to react to the most clear and present danger. But when we journey together we benefit from what others find clear and we have overlooked. Your sense of what is most present is challenged by those who have focused farther than you have - just as their perspective is improved by the details in front of their face that they just don't see.

The closing of a decade is an artificial boundary. We delineate periods of time as a matter of convenience and to neatly catalog the past. Profit and loss must be evaluated over time, but when we set artificial segments we get a distorted view of the big picture. A good month does not alter the trajectory of a difficult year. The gains of three great quarters of profitable growth can be wiped-out in no time at all. The crossing over from one month, year or decade to another is insignificant in the continuity of events.

Life is a string of yesterdays and tomorrows. If we strive to be better tomorrow than we were yesterday - it may be possible to control some of what we perceive as destiny.

The problem is in measuring "better" in real time. We can always look backwards and see what has happened, but leadership requirees looking forward - and imagining what might - and then willing and muscling into place the future we want to see. You determine what is necessary to happen - and then find a way to make that possible. To do this you must convince others to see what's possible and help them become inspired to make it necessary. This is how leaders cultivate conscientiousness and help people find their grit.

Leadership is a powerful force whose benefits are not for the leader's gain. A strong, effective leader's power is demonstrated in the performance of those you lead. The only measure of leadership is in the success of those who find themselves guided and inspired by the leader's actions.

This is what is so difficult and tenuous about becoming a competent leader. You cannot lead in a vacuum; leadership requires both feedback and sufficient self-awareness to learn from your environment. This is why, as the African proverb aptly suggests, "To travel fast, travel alone. To travel far, travel together." You might be tempted to trust your own judgement - and place yourself and your company at peril. No matter how slowly we deliberate within the confines of our own habits of thinking - you are always moving much more quickly than when you allow others to challenge your thinking.

Your habits of thinking are tied closely to the beliefs you feel most comfortable living by.

You need to surround yourself with people you trust and can depend on who will push you beyond your comfort zone and cause you to examine not just what you believe - but why you believe it. This is how you learn what you need to learn - as opposed to embellishing what you already know. It confronts your own confirmation bias and forces you to grow as a leader.

Think about what your company might look like ten years from now. What is your role in this. Are you still at the helm and guiding the fight forward? Or have you passed the torch to your child or children? Have you sold your stake, cashed-out and moved-on to the next thing that matters most to you? Whatever it is that you see, your capacity to get there is not assured by what got you here. You will need to get ahead of the things that might otherwise overcome you.

As one of my good friends says, to grow as a leaders you must grow as a human being.

What will you choose to do in order to make yourself into the person you need to be - in order to create the life - and the future you want to have? The turn of the decade is a mythical starting line - and in truth there is no absolute finish line. The time to start is today, and success is in the journey - not your destination.

To travel far - you must travel together. Engage with people who will challenge your ideas, your convictions and your abilities. Find a mentor who cares enough to tell you the truth. Join or gather a group of peers who will hold you accountable to both your aspirations and the things that you will need to accomplish in order to realize your greatest potential.

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Note: This is all we do at ALPS Leadership. If you would like to find connections that will help you travel to where you want to be - we can help you find that path, or point you in the direction of where you might discover it - or introduce you to someone who can help guide you.

Phil Liebman is the Founder and CEO at ALPS Leadership - We Guide CEO's and Their Leadership Teams to Become Exceptionally Competent Leaders and High-Performance Organizations

www.ALPSLeadership.com

Phil is also been a Group Chairman with Vistage Worldwide since 2005 - where he helps leaders realize their potential by learning with and from other leaders. He is the author of the soon-to-be published book, "Cultivating MoJo: How competent leaders inspire exceptional performance."