Turn On Your Leadership WIFI
Turn On Your Leadership WIFI
A simple technique for identifying opportunities for growth
Here’s a technique I use to help leaders identify opportunities for growth at their companies. It’s a fun way to explore innovation that goes overlooked, and helps leaders receive “strong signals” from the people who will help them achieve it.
Find the Hidden Opportunities to Grow
Effective leaders are always on the lookout for untapped potential. Major market shifts, competitor exits, consumer trends and new technology are easy to spot. Other times, innovation requires deep work, like strategically analyzing data to discover internal and external growth priorities. Thankfully there’s a creative way to uncover leads for growth that are on the edge of our (in)sight.
It’s called your Growh WIFI, a technique I learned years ago that I use during many strategic planning sessions. You can use it more frequently; some clients do it weekly. Best of all, it gets your entire team involved. Here’s how it works.
Connect to Growth Signals
You’re familiar with internet WiFi - signals that ripple through home and office to access the internet without a cord. Well, Growth WIFI is a similar metaphor — a tool to tap into the broader growth environment — without being tethered to current or past performance. In this case, the acronym for WIFI stands for:
Wouldn’t It (be) Fantastic If…(WIFI)
It works similarly to internet wifi for business exploration, with a few specs:
No “cords.” Avoid ideas that are “tethered” to something you’re already doing in the firm (avoiding incrementalism).
No “interference.” Participants cannot stifle or disrupt ideas offered by others during the activity. Let signals flow without blocking or discounting them.
No “passwords.” Ideas cannot be locked, require special access or “out of reach” to the participants. Nothing is off limits, or should require tools, techniques or assets people wouldn’t have regular access to (or could quickly add).
No “bandwidth limits.” Brainstorming should not be limited by an “impossibility” at either extreme, too much or too little potential. Collect all ideas — small and grandiose — to see where they might go with further investigation.
No “channels.” Contributions should not be isolated to one part of the firm, market or stakeholder. Use the process to penetrate sales silos or organizational barriers (no safe harbors); All areas within a firm or department are fair game.
How to Host a Growth WIFI Discussion
After reviewing the rules, ask your people to identify any opportunities they see from their positions/roles with their everyday powers of observation. For example, do they see:
Customers who could be served more/better?
Any products or services that are missing from current offerings?
New trends, market conditions or changes that catch their attention?
Opportunities to radically shift procedures, systems or practices?
Behaviors, traits or talents the firm could add to enhance talent performance?
These five points should spark an information-gathering session that’s quick, brisk and wide-ranging.
Remember these rules when running the WIFI exercise:
Keep it positive and creative
Avoid tendencies to discuss “weaknesses” and focus on “what else” instead
Examine organizational, market, customer, or operational opportunities
Do not discuss individual people’s performance rather than productivity context
Accept all observations, and do not require special authority for contributions
Once you collect a list of 5-10 potential growth observations, you can apply the WIFI method to get deeper into a particular observation.
Turning on the Growth WIFI
Select one item from the list of observations to focus on for the next 10 minutes. Tell everyone to “turn on their WIFI” by asking the following question:
“Thinking about this opportunity, Wouldn’t It (be) Fantastic If…”
Then invite people to finish the sentence in any way they wish.
Collect the group’s endings, without qualification, until the group exhausts their imaginations. Then, repeat the process for another item, as time permits.
Keep the process fast-moving, fun, and creative, and let people work off each other’s ideas.
A WIFI Activity Example
Let’s say you try Growth WIFI during an office meeting. The initial observations might include:
The number of condos being built is expanding rapidly
A local competitor has recently closed and used to manage many rental units
Our clients could save time and money from our ancillary partners more
Many new people are joining the local association who could be valuable to our organization
New trends in home renovation include space for grandparents and young-adult children
A new technology reduces the time to edit videos without specialized knowledge
After gathering all of these ideas on a flip chart or digital whiteboard in an online meeting, you can decide collectively which ones you’d like to explore further. (Of course, you’ll have a great list of observations for investigation later.)
Select one item, and restate it with WIFI, such as:
“When we consider new talent joining the local association who could be valuable to our organization, Wouldn’t it be Fantastic If….”
Now, gather the responses from everyone, keeping the rules in mind. Keep the conversation flowing. Guide people as they answer: It could be a simple hunch. It could be a wild idea. It doesn’t have to be fully thought out yet. Just reasonable, possible, and optimistically valuable to the organization. (Don’t let people get too deep into any solutions yet. They can participate in further investigation later.)
You might hear responses like:
“Wouldn’t it be fantastic if we got 20% of them to work for our company?”
“Wouldn’t it be fantastic if some of them referred business to us?”
“Wouldn’t it be fantastic if some of them joined our masterminds?”
“Wouldn’t it be fantastic if we did a co-broke deal with each one.?”
“Wouldn’t it be fantastic if they attended our training classes?”
“Wouldn’t it be fantastic if they all got a listing this month, and changed the inventory shortage?”
“Wouldn’t it be fantastic if they became Board volunteers?”
“Wouldn’t it be fantastic if one of them knew a legislator who could listen to our perspective on regulations impacting consumers?”
And so on, until the group exhausts its enthusiasm for that one topic, or ten minutes pass and you’re ready to go on.
Good Signals, Weak Signals, No Signals
Of course, not every “ending” to the WIFI phrase will be an opportunity you’ll pursue. Some ideas might be optimistic wishes. Others may be suggestions beyond the scope of your mission. But occasionally, you may discover a perspective, a hunch, or an insight that leads to an opportunity to be pursued. It will be barely developed at that point but brought to everyone’s attention. Further study, data gathering, or development can be pursued at the right pace.
There isn’t a right or wrong outcome to this exercise. The benefits sharpen people’s observation (and tendency to seek such opportunities), to hear others’ insights, and collaborate on spotting conditions that might lead to new sources of growth.
Upgrading your Growth WIFI
Finally, your Growth WIFI could lead to significant priorities in growth. You’ve read stories of “serendipitous” moments that changed a company’s trajectory - like the invention of the Post-It note from a failed attempt to make a stronger glue, not a weaker one.
You don’t have to hope for a “lightning strike” every time. Like any competitive advantage, it’s a muscle that strengthens over time. Some progress might occur from small observations, such as the pursuit of a trend that otherwise went unnoticed. Your WIFI activity doesn’t have to change everything to change something that adds value, competitive advantage, or upgrades to existing growth that’s well worth pursuing.
So, what growth could you detect with your new WIFI signals?
