Paying It Forward: Sharpen Your Pencils
Look further than others, ask questions and you can find unique solutions, as well as set "early-warning" signals helping you see market changes before others. You have more time and an action plan.
Consider this quotation by John Wesley in your 2025 goals, “Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, to all the people you can, in all the places you can, as long as ever you can.”
Data based decisions bring comfort, but data is only available about the past.
Similarly, rowing a boat, can be defined as going forward by looking at where you have been.
As you ponder why 2025 will be different, make sure you look forward creatively and consider scenarios due to likely headwinds beyond your control.
Consider the impact of economics, international events, market trends or personal life changes. Imagine your long-range plan included corrective actions based on the question. “Are you better now?”
Your SWOT matrix — Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats — highlights challenges that are addressed in the plan.
Including most likely scenarios caused by factors outside your control, gives you a quality plan of action should that scenario come true.
For example, consider two key environmental factors, job security and job mobility.
Do you have a job that is secure? Can you easily find another job in a reasonable amount of time?
Now you have defined 4 scenarios:
Have a job and can easily find a job
Have a job and hard to find a job
Job at risk and easy to find a job
Job at risk and hard to find a job
As part of your long-range plan, consider these four scenarios and have a strategy and action plan to achieve your goals balancing financial security, risk, work/home balance, etc.
Inclusion of anecdotal observations in the plan can facilitate recognition of a specific scenario sooner.
Better results come from earlier identification as corrective actions can be applied earlier in the scenario cycle.
Sharpen your pencils. Schoolchildren learn in Japan this nightly ritual so they are ready for school the following day. My 8-year-old grandson, Sotaro, has a creative alternative that came to light when he left his pencil box at home. His mother noticed his pencils were not sharpened.
After school when asked how he can do his school work without pencils, Sotaro explained that his friends loan him their sharpened pencils. He rewards them with points, carefully recorded so all can see. His classmates are all eager to loan pencils to him.
Creativity starts early. Influence is powerful.
Published Wichita Falls Times Record News, Trends section, Sunday January 12, 2025
Jack Browne is a community volunteer and former engineer, who became a technology sales and marketing executive over 40 years at Motorola Austin, MIPS Technologies and other Silicon Valley companies. How are the children doing?