To Stay Ahead of the "Curve Balls," Think Like an Entrepreneur

Source: RainToday

In this podcast, RainToday's Mike Schultz interviews Leonard A. Schlesinger, president of Babson College and co-author of Action Trumps Everything. The book presents a model — which the authors call CreAction — for dealing with the inevitable surprises that occur in an increasingly complex, uncertain world.

Taking their cues from successful “serial entrepreneurs,” the authors argue that traditional reactions to these “curve balls” — characterized by an obsessive focus on staying on plan or achieving predetermined outcomes — are increasingly useless. CreAction views unexpected events as an opportunity to embrace not only a new plan, but new outcomes.

“Rather than focusing on stuff that is unexpected as a failure,” Schlesinger explains, “there's an opportunity to recognize that the surprises by and large are good if you embrace them and use that as learning for taking your next step.”

In the accounting industry, Schlesinger says, this approach is particularly suitable for more complex, uncertain services, such as consulting. Firms that embrace this strategy, allowing professionals to engage in a “process of conscious, limited experimentation where people are actually assessing current reality at each step in the process,” have an opportunity to differentiate themselves meaningfully from firms that offer a more traditional approach.

To download Action Trumps Everything for free, click here.

To listen to the podcast, visit “How Professional Services Firms Can Benefit from Entrepreneurial Thinking — An Interview with Leonard A. Schlesinger.” The podcast is also available here.

From RainToday, www.raintoday.com,  January 4, 2011.