There is an old saying “don’t look back, something might be gaining on you.” That might not however be good advice in a highly competitive and dynamic world. Let’s look at more up to date situations. The Golden State Warriors just had the best ever regular season record in basketball this year, but due to an untimely injury in the playoffs to the league’s most valuable player (2 years in a row), they lost in the final game of the championship. Ordinarily a great team might say just wait till next year, and it’s highly unlikely there will be another fluke injury to their superstar Steph Curry. Instead they went all out and signed the most valuable player in 2014 and who is as good or even better then Curry; Kevin Durant. This is the epitome of never being complacent and now they are odds on favorite to win this year’s champion.

So what are you or your company doing to follow this same trajectory in upping your game? Are you setting more aggressive targets for this year, no matter how well you just did? Do you make excuses for failure, instead of owning up to it? Have you looked where unforeseen events tripped you up and put into place an insurance policy to cover such events? Do you encourage others to give you bad news, or do you have a culture of looking at the world through rose colored glasses?

For corporations, are you being proactive in the following areas: Evaluating your staff to see where you need redundancy for key employees if someone leaves? Similarly, do you have both a RIF plan as well as retention devises for critical staff? Do you have a game plan identifying specific prospects to be added to replace key clients you may possibly lose? Have you created a profit plan including contingencies that you will effectuate as needed? It is indeed surprising how many small to mid-sized companies do not incorporate the above into their thinking before we incorporate this into their DNA.

To see all articles in this series please go to http://optimal-mgt.com/blog.