To navigate is to direct or manage something on its course; in other words, to control the movement from one place to another. To navigate means to determine one’s position and direction and make a way over or through. Historically, the field of navigation is most prominent in air, sea, and space as the primary skill in successfully guiding planes, ships, and rockets to their intended destinations. More recently, the term navigate has been used in an array of contextual landscapes including politics, relationships, ecosystems, and business.
How To Best Navigate Business
During my time facilitating strategy workshops and providing strategic coaching for executive leadership teams over the past 20 years, the issue of how to best navigate the business has become a recurring theme for many highly effective leaders, as the following direct quotations demonstrate:
“One issue I’m wrestling with is how best to navigate that with the team.”
“There are just some things that I don’t know how to, I don’t know how to navigate them.”
“That’s what I want healthcare to be like. That’s what my family wants. Yes, it’s fragmented. It’s confusing to know how to navigate it, and how are we going to solve that?”
“As our market becomes even more competitive with nontraditional players entering, I’m just trying to constructively navigate.”
When Disney brought back Bob Iger for his second stint as CEO, his return was described in the Wall Street Journal with the following: “Walt Disney Co. has brought back the CEO responsible for its pivot to streaming. As he returns, Robert Iger has to navigate a competitive landscape that is far more challenging than when he left less than three years ago.”
The essential meta-skill of a leader is to navigate their business with a thorough understanding of their current situation, vision to see the future destination, and the ability to create the path to reach it. When you have the knowledge, tools, and skills to navigate your business, it produces both competence and confidence. How then do you acquire, maintain, and grow the ability to successfully navigate your business, moving from your current position, over and through obstacles, to reach your goals? It requires you to be strategic.
I’ve created the following infographic to highlight the importance for leadership teams to develop the ability to consistently set strategic direction to successfully navigate their business. If you and your team would like a proven process and skilled strategy facilitation to support setting direction for your business, please contact me to set up time to chat. Remember, be strategic to be your best.
