I remember when I was part of a large organization, at the beginning of each year, we'd gather to set our annual goals, documenting them in Workday, and we reviewed what we've achieved in June and at the year-end. The system theoretically worked quite well, especially during peacetime when the economic environment was relatively stable and predictable for a year ahead. But then came COVID, bringing along a series of turbulent changes, and the goals set in January were already not valid in March. The economic environment and corporate priorities kept shifting continuously, and daily work had to adapt accordingly.
At the end the constant change forced us to handle the annual goals more as guidelines, and instead of them we managed the company’s ship and the team with frequent situation analyses, redesigning, and continuous managerial feedback in the right direction. Aiming for the best possible results given the circumstances. This is a much more flexible way of managing organizations, and in the post-COVID world, I don't think there's any other way to ensure quick adaptation, even if the larger the organization, the greater the need to engrave goals in stone. The other big advantage is the continuous dialogue between the leader and team members about performance, allowing for immediate resolution of any issues and ensuring that good results are not forgotten
This required continuous presence from me as a leader and the need to constantly be aware of both external and internal circumstances. But even this didn't necessarily prepare me for the pace at which one needs to adapt alone as an entrepreneur, at least based on the experiences I've had in the past months, or rather, in the past year. After redesigning from scratch twice, now I'm in a phase where almost every conversation, every day brings new information that makes me completely reevaluate something, things that seemed everlasting fade away, and absurdities become normal that I wouldn't have imagined just days ago.
I'm curious, for those of you who have been in similar situation, how have you experienced this? Even if the business survives the first one or two years, are experiences like "wow, I never thought this would happen" still common? Or is fast drift independent of this and now true of all kinds of organisations?
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