Bizwave: Seeing Opportunities

[Bizwave]

Bizwave: think through it and do it
Seeing opportunities


Some people will tell you that opportunities are all around us. Some will tell you that there is an opportunity in every crisis. Some will even tell you that they find it difficult to attend to all the opportunities they see. Some even blame opportunities for distracting them from their current actvities, chasing after so many that they hardly catch any. If there really are so many opportunities around us, why is it that we have such a high unemployment rate, why so little entrepreneurial drive and initiatives, why don’t we hear about all these opportunities?

I would like you to verify a point for yourself. Get a pen and paper, (or open your word processing program on your PC) right now. Note the date and time on the paper. Then read the next paragraph and do what it asks you to do after you’ve read the complete paragraph.

When you get to the end of this paragraph, give yourself about five minutes and look around you. Jot down two or three keywords for every business opportunity that you see around you. Don’t worry about the feasibillity, the size or even if you would like to persue the opportunity. However , it should be at least an opportunity that you believe someone might be interested in persuing within the next few months or so. After the 5 minutes, also jot down two or so keywords describing your emotions or feelings. You may start now.

Let us look at the two possible outcomes of this “see the opportunities� exercise. The first might be that you experienced frustration, irritation, helplessness or dissappointment and even consider the exercise as a “painful� experience. Apart from that, you might not even have identified many business opportunities. Perhaps even none. Well, if this first case applies to you, I have good news and bad news for you. First the good news: You experienced the exercise no different than the majority of people in South Africa would. You are definately part of the majority. Most of us have difficulty in identifying business opportunities, especially when we’re caught off-guard, as when in a crisis. Most of us think about the situation or the crisis and who should be to blame, rather than seeing the opportunities flowing from that. We tend to think about who should have prevented the situation, rather than actually doing something about the situation. Sometimes we even play the “silent democracy� card, when we are required to do something, but we actually have absolutely no idea how to do it.

This really was the good news. Now the bad news. To own your future, you have to be able to see business opportunities whenever you want to see them. It is as simple as that. Without seeing opportunities you cannot own your own future. In my next post I will share with you the easiest way of ensuring that you are always able to IDENTIFY and USE any opportunity that comes your way.