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In today’s episode of the Leader Fluent Podcast, I’m sharing a lesson that comes straight from my new book, Stop Chasing Easy. In today’s episode I’ll talk about “Developing an Opportunity Mindset. Plus, in this episode I’ll share how you can get a copy of Stop Chasing Easy, along with several FREE BONUS RESOURCES including the “Stop Chasing Easy Masterclass for Leaders.” 

If you’re not already a subscriber, I’d love for you to subscribe to Leader Fluent today on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, Android, Pandora, or your favorite podcasting platform. And as always, your RATINGS and REVIEWS are deeply appreciated. 

SHOW NOTES:

Samuel Truett Cathy is remembered as the successful entrepreneur and founder of Chick-fil-A. Cathy died in 2014, but his quick-service restaurants continue to thrive today. In fact, each Chick-fil-A makes more money per store than McDonalds, Starbucks, and Subway combined. While the success of Chick-fil-A is obvious, what you may not know about is the struggle that Truett Cathy experienced along the way. 

• He grew up in the Great Depression. 
• As a child he had a speech impediment so bad that he couldn’t even pronounce his own name.
• In 1949, Truett’s brothers, Ben and Horace (both licensed pilots), tragically died in a plane crash as they flew to Chattanooga, Tennessee. 
• In 1960, one of his restaurants burned to the ground. The worst part? Truett only had $25,000 worth of insurance, not near enough to cover his loss.
• Not long after, Truett discovered he had polyps in his colon. As a result he had two surgeries, and had to have twelve inches of his colon removed. 

While we admire his success, the hardships made Truett Cathy. He later said:

“The history of Chick-fil-A, in fact, is a series of unexpected opportunities. When we responded to them, we often found ourselves richly blessed. The Chick-fil-A Chicken Sandwich itself was born in the wake of an unexpected opportunity. When one of my first two restaurants burned to the ground, I found myself with time on my hands and the availability to develop a new recipe.”

Cathy could have wallowed in defeat—most people would if they watched so many hours of hard work burn up in flames. Instead, Truett discovered a billion-dollar idea in the ashes. What enabled Truett Cathy to successfully navigate his setbacks? The right perspective. He exchanged pessimism for possibility. He looked for the right opportunities in the uncomfortable and the unexpected. Truett once said, “We change the world, and ourselves, by our response to unexpected opportunities.” 

So, how do you develop an opportunity mindset in the face of problems and hardship? It begins by taking four steps.

1. Embrace the Problem

Problems can be difficult, discouraging, and even downright painful. That’s why we like to ignore them. In fact, our tendency is to only address problems in two situations—when they’re easy to solve or when they’ve become a crisis too big to ignore. It’s in the messy middle that we pretend problems don’t exist. But here’s the problem in ignoring your problems. When you ignore your problems, you simultaneously ignore the opportunities buried within them. 

2. Examine the Problem 

To discover possibilities in your problems, you have to diagnose the problem. Embracing the problem forces you to deal with the problem, but examining the problem gets to the root cause. Sakichi Toyoda, founder of Toyota, developed a diagnostic approach which became popular in the 1970s, and is still used by Toyota today. The strategy is simply this—define a problem and then ask “Why?” five times until you get to the root cause of the issue.

3. Explore the Possibilities 

Once you’ve uncovered the root cause of your problem, start exploring the possible solution (or opportunity) hidden within your problem. That’s exactly what Truett Cathy did. After his restaurant burned to the ground (which I think we would all agree was certainly a problem), Truett didn’t just focus on reopening the store. That would have been the most obvious solution. Instead, Truett rummaged through the ashes of his problem and found a BETTER solution. In fact, not just a better solution, but a GREATER POSSIBILITY. 

The GREATEST opportunities are often hijacked by the most OBVIOUS opportunities. For Truett, the obvious opportunity was to rebuild the restaurant and go back to business as usual. But the obvious opportunity wasn’t the greatest opportunity. The greatest opportunity was to create a new recipe that paved the way for Chick-fil-A to be born. To discover the greatest opportunities, take three steps: 

• Create time and space for opportunity thinking. 
• Identify the problems nobody else is solving.
• Leverage your organization’s greatest strengths to solve unsolved problems. 

4. Engage the Possibility 

It’s not enough to discover the possibility; you must act on it. That’s when opportunity comes to life. In his book, Great by Choice, Jim Collins describes the best way to pursue opportunities when he talks about firing bullets vs. cannonballs. Jim Collins writes:

Picture yourself at sea, a hostile ship bearing down on you. You have a limited amount of gunpowder. You take all your gunpowder and use it to fire a big cannonball. The cannonball flies out over the ocean…and misses the target, off by 40 degrees. You turn to your stockpile and discover that you’re out of gunpowder. You die. 

But suppose instead that when you see the ship bearing down, you take a little bit of gunpowder and fire a bullet. It misses by 40 degrees. You make another bullet and fire. It misses by 30 degrees. You make a third bullet and fire, missing by only 10 degrees. The next bullet hits—ping!—the hull of the oncoming ship. Now, you take all the remaining gunpowder and fire a big cannonball along the same line of sight, which sinks the enemy ship. You live. 

So, how does Jim Collins’ “bullets vs. cannonball” analogy apply to opportunities for your organization? Collins describes it like this:

First, you fire bullets (low-cost, low-risk, low-distraction experiments) to figure out what will work—calibrating your line of sight by taking small shots. Then, once you have empirical validation, you fire a cannonball (concentrating resources into a big bet) on the calibrated line of sight. Calibrated cannonballs correlate with outsized results; uncalibrated cannonballs correlate with disaster. The ability to turn small proven ideas (bullets) into huge hits (cannonballs) counts more than the sheer amount of pure innovation. 

This is how you engage possibility and act on opportunity. You fire bullets then cannonballs. Again, you take low-cost, low-risk, low-distraction experiments to figure out what will work. And then, once you’ve calibrated your line of sight, you fire the cannonball so you can see the greatest results. 

CHECK OUT MY NEW BOOK & FREE BONUSES

Check out my new book, Stop Chasing Easy, and access the FREE bonus content. You can learn more about the book, purchase a copy, and then claim the bonus content HERE. 

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