In times of uncertainty, your employees, customers, partners, and shareholders want to hear three things. Learn what they are in this exclusive BusinessWeek column.
BusinessWeek is running a special series of articles under the title, The Case for Optimism. It started when Editor-in-Chief, Stephen J. Adler, returned from the World Economic Forum at Davos and was frustrated by how negative the tone had become. He attributes much of the economic malaise on a “groupthink” mentality. “You have a choice,” Adler says. “It’s just as rational to see the economic glass as half full as half empty.”
The editors at BusinessWeek asked me to contribute an article to the series which you can read here. In my reading of history, very few people were as optimistic as Sir Winston Churchill, the British Prime Minister in World War II. So I decided to seek out one of the most prominent professors of Churchill history and apply Churchill’s techniques to today’s business leaders. In every Churchill speech, he offered the following ideas:
1. A candid assessment of the problem.
2. A strategy for overcoming the challenge.
3. A vision of what the business will look like if the strategy is successful.
Learn more in An Inspiring Leader is an Optimistic One