True North Coaching | Starting and Growing a Small Business takes Guts, Daring and Skills!
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Most entrepreneurs aren’t pure business people. They’re ideas people, driven by a powerful insight, powered by ambition to succeed. Think of Henry Ford, and his insight that people didn’t need faster horses, they needed a motorcar. Or Bill Gates, who saw the future and knew that it meant that most people would have their own small, powerful personal computer on their desks.

These successful entrepreneurs saw where their vision fitted into a future that did not yet exist, and decided to build that future.

What do you want to build?

When problems arise in your business it’s more important to remember what you want to build not just what you want to fix. Focusing on solving problems diverts your attention from a far more important activity, and that is creating the new.

Productivity and sustainable solutions emerge when we move in the direction of what we want to create or bring into reality.

Think of something that you want to change or create or build in your business – and answer the questions below.

The answers will help you to see your route to the future clearly.


What is your purpose (reason) and why?
What are the intentions of other key stakeholders?


What are the outcomes you want?
How will you know if you have accomplished what you want?


What factors in the environment might shape your behavior (trends, events, political, economic, resource constraints, roles of those involved etc)?


What are your assumptions about the situation?
Your role and others?
Are these true/accurate? If you are not sure, what can you do to find out?
What are people feeling about this?
What are people thinking and feeling but not saying that affects this?


What action can you take that will get the results you want?
Who are the decision makers and sponsors and what do you need them to do?
What do you need others to do (By when, by whom and in what order)?

Adapted from Leadership for collective action

Take a little time to ponder all of these questions, and answer them as honestly as you can. And finally: once you’ve worked your way through this deceptively simple exercise, ask yourself: What will you do differently in the future as a result of doing this exercise?