Five Tips for Fabulous Global Success in 2016

Think back on 2015... what worked well, what didn't?

Business and love are easy in retrospect. Many times successes and failures are easy to diagnose after the fact.

Should have known this or that... should have acted sooner... shoulda, coulda, woulda...

But we're busy, and imperfect. And in the moment, stuff is happening. We don't always diagnose things as quickly as we need to, or react as quickly as we should.

What we want to happen often clouds our judgement on what's actually happening. That's one reason global business is more complex... the data is sometimes a bit cloudier coming in because we can't walk down the street and talk to someone about what's happening.

Also often with global business it pays to be patient. Other times 'fail fast' is a better strategy.

Even to the experienced it's not always easy to discern the right path looking forward.

So it's with this introduction that we share our 5 tips for greater global success in 2016.

1) Create Your Vision. Without an end vision, any path will get you there. And so it's important to have your vision. Create Vision 2020. At minimum create Vision 2016... what do you expect to happen this year... revenue, markets, countries, profit, milestones...? Write it down. Discuss with your team. Is this real? How do we do it? Are we all in?

2) Reevaluate SWOT. Pause and think about your Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. Spend a week with your team thinking, discussing, dreaming, evaluating and documenting. What progress have we made in these? What's changed? Are we reacting to change as quickly as we should?

3) Reevaluate Your Team. Who is our team - employees, contractors, partners, interns, volunteers and service providers? Do we have the right distribution of people? Are our key issues addressed with the right talent? Are our skills aligned with priorities? Some global services to think about are in this recent article by Doug Bruhnke of Global Chamber.

4) Create an Action Plan. Start by listing out what the important things to do are. Prioritize one, two or three. It will take several iterations. For the first few weeks of the year, process the list as a team. Segregate special tasks on one list and projects on another. Create timelines for each... when will they be completed? Some will be ongoing activities... create those as a third category. Projects are the 12-20 key initiatives. Tasks come and go... knock them off, one by one. Process these weekly or monthly by your team including re-prioritizing.

5) Track and Be Resilient. Keep your vision top of mind and your action plan by your side every week. Track progress be comparing the milestones you achieve versus the milestones you expected in both your vision and plan. Be flexible, be resilient and adjust. Global business versus simple domestic business requires all these due to cross-border complexity. It's why membership in Global Chamber is so important for global companies... because things happen along the way that require reaching out for help that resides in the global tribe.

Tips number one, two and three are primarily an annual activity. Make sure your processes are wrapped up on those this month.

Tips number four and five are ongoing. Keep your action plan up-to-date and track incessantly... how are we doing? What adjustments are required?

Let's make it a great year of growth and success across borders!