Learning to Think in Opportunities, Not Problems

Ask a leader to list 10 problems faced by the team, and they won’t hesitate to rattle them off.

The request for 10 more wouldn’t be a heavy lift either.

But ask the same leader to list 10 opportunities for the team, and they will likely struggle to complete the assignment. Identifying 20 opportunities will seem like a herculean task.

That’s because most leaders have trained themselves to think in terms of problems and how to fix or address them. Because of their bias for action, leaders are natural problem solvers. They teach themselves to look out for problems and issues that might impede success.

Unfortunately, the fixation to fix things comes at a cost.

Many leaders are notorious for looking past or missing opportunities that would move the ball further down the field. They become blind to opportunities because they are overly focused on problems.

Cultivating an opportunity mindset begins by observing trends and momentum, especially those that are unfavorable, negative, or discouraging.

Rather than seeing what issues or problems contributed to those trends, thinking opportunistically requires leaders to find an advantage others are overlooking.

For example, when markets decline, fewer deals, sales, trades, and transactions get done. So, most leaders and team members wait for the marketplace to recover to begin speaking to customers and clients about what they have to offer.

But a leader who thinks in opportunities would recognize that competitors would likely be doing exactly that — waiting for things to get better.

What advantage with customers and clients would the team experience if they became relationally attentive when there was no deal or sale to be done?

It just might be that when the marketplace recovered, customers and clients would seek to do business with those who stay connected with them when it didn’t really matter.

Opportunity-focused leaders examine any problem and look first as to what advantages or benefits it contains before marching ahead and fixing or resolving it.

The first move is to see opportunity, not challenge. Like many other habits, discipline and repetition imprint this way of thinking over time.

Great leaders don’t wait for opportunities; they find them. Sometimes in the most unusual places, such as problems.

They teach themselves to think in opportunity by choosing to focus first on what is possible, before addressing what needs to be fixed.

In the words of poet Emily Dickinson, “Not knowing when the dawn will come, I open every door.” The best leaders don’t wait for a knock. They kick the doors down in search of any advantage.