I’m the CTO of Setapp – a software development company focused on helping the maritime industry from all over the world implement novel technologies in the custom software we provide...
Being proactive makes you a leader in the business. You are the person, who foresee what can happen to make an appropriate step to gain the best part of the business opportunities. It also reduced business risk. On the other hand, by being reactive you allow your business environment to fully control your business risk. You react when it necessary, it means that you might end up in a very bad business situation.
Currently, it is both. When it comes to strategic risk we are proactive, but there are many operational risks we are not fully managing. Next, I will introduce the process to overcome this poor managing situation.
As always, learning by doing. I would work with the mentee and help they identifying the risk, understand it. It would be good to work on a real-life example. Also, I would find the situation, when both approaches reactive and proactive could work. Based on such experience I would work with mentee to understand which approach is better.
I believe that working together, with the colleagues on a specific decision may result in a better decision. Be open for the other opinions and insights is always a good choice. Ther are other practices to enhance the process. If it is possible, it is worth to give some time for the final decision. Make the decision as late as is possible.
OKR is a popular technique for setting goals with the organisation. Its main usage is to connect the company team and personal objectives to measurable results.
I would teach the basis of OKRs. Based on the knowledge I would work with the mentee and ask him to work with the team to build the first set of OKRs. Based on the experience from the exercise, I would work with him on adjustments, improvements of the whole system. Learning by doing makes the learning process fast.
Having customer insight we are able to prepare better, tailored offer for the client. It will increase the chances that customer will be happy with our cooperation and will back to us in the future, or will treat us as a partner, or will prolong the cooperation. All of it will have a positive effect on the company's financial aspects.
Yes, in such cases, I always carry on with a real-life example. First, I would work with the mentee to understand the market and who are they targeting. Next, I would nudge mentee and aks how would they collect data to help get customer insight. Based on such initial discussion with the mentee, I would ask them to go to collect it on some not-so-crucial client for the company. Based on the experience, I would drive them to proceed with the succoes in the future.