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Leadership Lessons From 2020

By Generational Equity

02/01/2021

Dear Reader: We are re-publishing a few of our more popular pieces over the next few weeks.   Here is one of our favorites from earlier this year.  We hope you enjoy the Insight Refresher as we move through 2021!

I recently read a very insightful article on lessons great leaders learned in 2020 during what can only be described as 12 months of unprecedented challenges. Written by the CEO of Vistage, Mr. Sam Reese, it outlines some fantastic ideas business leaders can take from the year and apply in 2021 and beyond.

As many of you know, Vistage is the largest CEO coaching and peer advisory organization for small and midsize businesses in the world (Generational and Vistage have a national strategic alliance). Mr. Reese has had an extensive career as a business leader and has gained valuable insights that he helps his members apply, especially after one of the most turbulent years in our generation.

Entitled, “Hindsight 2020: Lessons in leadership from a challenging year”, I would strongly suggest that you take a few minutes out of your day and read it. I think you will find it as worthwhile as I did.

Every point Reese makes is valuable to all leaders, but one of them really caught my eye:

Identify your company’s biggest challenges, then learn from them.

Over the past year, many leaders have had to innovate and overcome extraordinary challenges just to stay afloat. While many faced the obvious challenges brought on by the pandemic, others identified internal, operational and fiscal obstacles of which they weren’t aware.

Leaders have learned to be flexible in order to meet customers’ changing needs, adapted to working virtually and pivoted along the way. The most successful leaders have quickly determined what their company’s pain points have been and leveraged those to guide the path forward.

As we have mentioned before, as amazing as this sounds, 2020 turned out to be a record year for Generational in terms of deals closed. None of us expected to see that happened when March of 2020 hit.

And, although much of our success is due to the unbelievable team of professionals we have working for the firm, another key part of it was the amazing and inspiring way our clients adjusted operations, focus, and adapted to ever-changing circumstances. Our success in 2020 was inspired by the clients we get to serve every day.

Another real benefit to our clients was the addition of Generational Consulting Group (GCG) in 2019. The team with GCG has proven to be extremely effective in helping our clients implement both tactical and strategic growth plans that have proven to really add value to their exit planning. Have a listen to what a few of them say about GCG’s amazing success with their businesses:

As we have all learned the hard way, doing business as usual wouldn’t work in 2020 and will probably have long-term impacts on how all sorts of industries and companies operate well beyond 2020.

So, learn from Sam Reese and apply those lessons in your business as well!

And if you would like to learn more about all the services Generational provides that can help you succeed and eventually exit your company for maximum profit, follow these links and then reach out to us for more information:

Carl Doerksen is the Director of Corporate Development at Generational Equity.

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