Optimism is the key. Organizations that are always looking for opportunities have cultures that are optimistic. They reward innovation, energy and attitude. They encourage exponential effort and suggestions and frown on ordinary, average or incremental responses.

Use our Hunt for Opportunities Idea Center to activate a new and optimistic search for ways to grow your business and to succeed in any economy. Opportunities abound – in any economy. The trick is changing how you and your teams look at the world – and how to see ways to add value, manage expenses, be more efficient or to invent new responses.

Get ready to hunt …opportunities for success await. Be clever. Be great.

Review your culture:
1. Develop a more optimistic attitude and work culture. Openly see and discuss the positive in negative events. Be known for an optimistic and “can do” approach in all events.

2. Identify a negative organizational event (lost customer, bad product, poor service, expense out of control) and share it with the organization. Ask all employees to identify what lessons are learned from the event and what new opportunities can come from the event. Share the results with everyone.

3. Openly applaud employees who succeed or fail – only when the effort was focused on a smart exponential response or opportunity. This encourages all employees to focus on exponential instead of incremental. Knowing it is okay to take calculated risks for greatness, empowers employees to move out of ordinary performance and to reach for extraordinary performance.

4. Share the three most critical issues or challenges the business has with your employees. Ask them to innovate solutions to the challenges; impose no limits on their suggestions. Help them see that they should be able to innovate and invent without limitation in order to define opportunities that can make a big difference for the organization.

5. Help all employees learn their talent areas and strengths. Use the Talents and Thinking Analysis on this Website. Once employees know their talents and strengths, be sure that they are matched to jobs that use these talents. The more an employee is aligned to talents and strengths, the greater his performance and opportunity-thinking.

6. Provide periodicals, newspapers or approved blogs and websites for employees to review. Expand what employees know by requiring them to stay connected to their world. Monthly, have employees relate what they have seen and read to opportunities for the organization.

7. Give each employee a SWOT Analysis worksheet (get your copy from the Hunt for Opportunities Pack on this website). Have each employee analyze a section of the business. As they observe then assess the area, have them record their assessments as a Strength, Weakness, Opportunity or Threat. Once the employee has completed the SWOT analysis, review each Strength, Weakness and Threat and identify additional Opportunities. Share this analysis with management.

8. Create an Opportunity Finder award – given to the employee that is most creative in identifying and following through on an opportunity that grows the business or improves results. Name the award; connect it to a powerful prize to get the attention of your employees and make a big deal of it when it is awarded. Consider awarding this every month or quarter.

9. Create a “raise it to a power” program. Have employees identify opportunities for the business. For each one they propose, they must then propose one that is greater, more significant or more powerful. This encourages employees to identify and suggest more exponential opportunities.

10. Encourage employees to join professional societies and organizations in which they have personal and professional interests. Every time the society or organization meets, require the employee to use what he has heard or seen and invent a new opportunity or enhancement that favorable affects results or performance.

Review your P&L…
11. Develop a weekly process to review all significant income and expense captions and use them to identify opportunities through new or less conventional approaches. Host a weekly P&L opportunity discussion.

12. Select the largest income and expense captions and distribute them to your staff. Have employees brainstorm ideas in these two areas: 1) How to improve control or performance of the income or expense captions and, 2) What new opportunities arise from a review of the income or expense captions. Assign this event every week. Meet to discuss options.

13. Select the salaries and wages expense caption. Review how employees work, are paid, are incentivized and assess any areas to invent opportunities to reinvent the approach to human capital. Consider flex time, internships, daily schedule changes or any other way to reenergize the workforce and control expenses.

14. Select the benefits expense caption. Reassess what benefits are, what they could be and what would appeal most to employees. Use this time to redefine the value of benefits to employees by providing meaningful ones; reconsider what meaningful benefits could be based on today’s world. Use the recession as an opportunity to reinvent benefits for your organization.

Review the external environment…15. Review the economy and current demographic trends; use your review to reevaluate your products and services, looking for opportunities that have arisen out of today’s circumstances. What are people buying, why? Where are they moving to? What is important to them? What has today’s economy done to the buying habits of consumers? Consider creating a demographics or economy team that constantly reviews and updates demographic/economic trends and reports back to the organization – to be assessed for opportunities.

16. Review technology changes and current technology innovation. Based on new products, what opportunities could be created for your business – to support them, provide them, use them or make your process of services or products more efficient or more profitable? Consider creating a technology team that constantly reviews and updates technology trends and reports back to the organization – to be assessed for opportunities.

17. Review changes to regulation and legislation. Based on changes or new laws, how is your organization affected? What opportunities could come from these changes either as a method to increase sales, modify products or services or to manage expenses. Consider creating a regulations/legislation team that constantly reviews and updates regulatory/legislative trends and reports back to the organization – to be assessed for opportunities.

Review your workplace…
18. What opportunities do you see when you review how you hire employees?

19. What opportunities do you see when you review how you engage and activate employees to perform?

20. What opportunities do you see when you review how you pay employees and schedule their workday?

21. What opportunities do you see when you review how you write and promote workplace polices?

22. What opportunities do you see when you review what it is like for employees to work in your workplace?

23. What opportunities do you see when you review whether your workplace is perceived by employees to be energetic, engaging and inspiring?

24. What opportunities do you see when you review how you review and provide feedback to employees?

25. What opportunities do you see when you review the way employees impact performance and profitability?

26. What opportunities do you see when you review how well or poorly employees contribute each day?

Review your customers…
27. What is the customers’ definition of value? Using this definition, what other ways can you provide value to your customer?

28. What is the greatest value of your product or service? Who else (what other type of customer) would find your product or service valuable? How can you contact them?

29. What is the most significant aspect of your customer service? How can you use it to create new opportunities?

30. What is the worst aspect of your customer service? How can you use it to improve and create more opportunities or new successes?

31. How can you use your existing relationships with customers to determine new product or service opportunities?

32. Identify your five most significant customers? What additional opportunities exist by the way you conduct business with them?

33. Identify and evaluate your most significant competitor. What do they do better than your organization? What are the opportunities learned from this competitor?

Review your operations…

34. What is the product or service quality and how can it be improved?

35. What do customers want most from your operations and how can you provide it?

36. What changes to your operations (timing, products, suppliers) would your customers pay more for?

37. What is the product or service efficiency and effectiveness and how can it be improved?

38. What is the product or service profitability and how can it be improved?

39. What products drive the greatest profits and do your operations support these more than others?

40. What is the employee’s input in reviewing or assessing operations?

41. What is the customers’ input in reviewing or assessing operations?

42. Asset management – do you have the right equipment to provide the right service/product?

We’ll always add more…check back often.

Share this with your team; require them to create more to add to this list.