The importance of opportunity training cannot be understated. I have a cousin who has been in the military for 27 years. She's always said that as long as she's been in the army, she's always been the best in the group, and that she's never had a problem getting ahead in the organization. Now she runs her own business and is very proud of it. However, one of the things that I've often asked her is what she would do if she had an open position in her company? She told me that she would do the same thing she does in the military - train, prepare, and go through the same opportunity training for the job interview as every other employee.
You see, I am not talking about business planning seminars. I am talking about learning how to do whatever it takes to make your business or organization number one. That means doing whatever it takes to gain the talent, creativity, skill, and drive necessary to be the number one player on the market place. It also means having the right attitude and character to get the job done. And these are skills that can be taught and learned.
The whole point of entrepreneurship is the ability to do what is necessary to make a profit. Yet many companies sit around and claim they are innovators. They say that they have come up with a new or exciting idea. But what they really mean is that they have re-invented the wheel, which is not a good enough reason to call yourself an innovator, especially when most companies do not innovate.
Now then, what is the proper way to conduct opportunity training for your workplace? I would say that you should be designing a system that gets your team involved in the process of creating business strategy. In other words, you want people who are willing to think outside the box and are willing to think outside the paycheck. These are the folks who will be able to turn your innovative ideas into lucrative business concepts.
Let me give you a personal example. Years ago, we at Prologik came up with a unique online marketing strategy. We were hoping to capitalize on the concept of social media marketing. Needless to say that it was a huge success! Now that we are running a small boutique design company, we still use some of the tactics we derived from that original business plan.
This is just one of the ways that opportunity training can be incorporated into a business to create innovation. In other words, you do not have to invent something, you can simply adapt or reuse something that others have invented. In this case, we took a Twitter account and turned it into a blog. You see, we were taking advantage of what the major players in Twitter were doing at the time, namely, tweeting.
Indeed, this strategy has proven to be extremely effective, and we have used it successfully for years. At the end of the day, your innovation efforts must always be geared to improving your business. If you do not take this step, you are leaving your business to chance. You cannot let chance to control where your business takes you. You must instead ensure that you are always using every opportunity to create new ideas, test them, and then implement them. If you are not using this strategy, you are leaving your business at a disadvantage because you won't know what is out there waiting for you to take advantage of.
Opportunity training for business owners can be fun. It allows you to get creative, think outside the box, and most importantly - test new concepts and ideas to ensure that they will actually work for your business. Don't leave innovation up to chance. Implement it as part of your overall business strategy. You will be surprised how much it can help you innovate and become a leader in your industry.
