Always Search For New Prospects

Act 113:

“It’s never too late… To Look For Opportunities

It sounds so obvious. But often, through pressure, or haste, or boredom, we get so fixated on our aim we miss opportunities on the way. Expand your vision. Open your mind. Look for your chance.” – Patrick Lindsay

Quote in book: “A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds.” ~ Francis Bacon

When I saw this I thought of the words, “Always Be Closing” from Boiler Room but I’m sure those words are also from another movie or saying in the stock market, too. However, that sort of applies here meaning... always be looking for your opportunity to sell (in the case of the movie) or make your move.

I was thinking of titling this blog as Always Be Ready or Always Be Alert meaning.. don’t close yourself off to the world. Don’t be so focused on the task at hand that you forget to think outside the box and/or forget to look for other opportunities or other solutions to the problem.

Right now at work, we are going through some cost saving efforts and I feel like the people at work are so focused on removing capability and removing requirements that they are forgetting that there are other ways to save money than just those two avenues… but I have to keep remembering my MBA schooling and remember that the people I work with are engineers.... Engineers will cut what they know. they aren't as creative as business type people (not that I'm a business type person...) Maybe no one has thought about the other things like manning, training, documentation, testing, or facilities. Or maybe they have. Who knows? Work is sucking right now and it has to do with this. However, we have obtained the ear of the leadership for one day. I’m going to use that as my opportunity to throw those other ideas out there.

The thing about looking for opportunities in life… is to make your life better, to make work better, to improve the situation somehow… you have to be open minded. A lot of the people I work with are very one-tracked minded and think that just because it worked before… means that that is how we should do it in the future. There's only one way to do things. Cut capability. I’m guilty of this too, but only when it has to do with old capabilities and requirements that are there today. When you are modernizing a system, there are certain things that you can not touch… so in that sense, I have one track mind... but it's just an assumption that you can not ignore.

Let’s say I am an internet service provider. Today you have the internet available to you 24hrs a day. Let’s say I want to modernize your modem to get you more bandwidth and new and improved encryption scheme so your neighbor can’t steal your internet. This new modem provides you with 5 times faster internet and your start up connection time is shorter. However, let’s say that I can only do this 12 hours of the day… from 8am – 8pm. Would that be acceptable to you if your requirement is that you need internet service 24 hrs/day? No it wouldn’t. Also as a customer you are used to 24hr service… why would I provide you with something less than that? Wouldn’t you be happier if it the speed was just 3x faster, but you get service 24 hrs/day? This is the stuff I have to deal with on a daily basis. I’m always fighting for the customer to get service 24hrs/day, because that’s what they are used to and that’s what they expect. You can’t modernize a system and take away capability, right? It’s like saying I got you a really awesome fast computer, but you can’t type the letter “Z” anymore… You’ll never notice. Just use “X” in it’s place people will know what you’re talking about.

Anyway, so because these guys are so close minded about wanting faster, faster, faster. They are willing to sacrifice old capabilities. I need to always be looking for opportunities to get my two cents in and looking for ways to make these guys and leadership understand the importance of the letter “Z”.

So, my advice to you. Be open minded. Be on the look out for opportunities, but the more important thing is take advantage of those opportunities. It’s one thing to get in the room with the decision makers, but it’s another to make sure you fight for the letter “Z”. If you sit there and say nothing… then you’ve just wasted your opportunity. Btw – So sorry for nerding out on my example. Work has just been on my mind lately and I’m hoping if y’all can understand my analogy… then maybe the decision makers will to. I need to be ready when the opportunity presents itself!