In a competitive, skills-short market, one of the biggest questions on every leader’s mind is how to make their best
5 skills that will make your business competitive in today’s landscape
To have a competitive advantage in a highly competitive landscape you need more than just experience in your employees. You need skills and characteristics that accelerate performance, build credibility through thought leadership, and grow customer loyalty by delivering results.
How exactly do you do that?
By understanding the specific skills and characteristics that will unleash the potential of your team and using this knowledge to attract, recruit, and retain talent through targeted talent acquisition and professional development programs.
What are these key skills?
There are 5 key skills we see as being essential in this decade:
1. Digital Acumen
There is no denying it. Digital is part of our present and an essential to our future. Digital acumen is about understanding your customers and your business to the degree that you are able to implement and execute digital strategies to accelerate your competitiveness.
You can transform processes and workflows by implementing a digital strategy over time. It doesn’t have to be a one-time shock. This transformation can enhance your customers’ experience, your sales and redefine your marketing approach.
Unless you are digitally proactive, you’re running last in a competitive race.
2. Agility
High achievers know that for progress to happen, change needs to happen. They adapt and embrace this change with a gracious flexibility and ease. There are two fundamental aspects with agility: emotional agility and learning agility.
Emotional agility is about how we can proactively regulate our emotions in multiple scenarios to manage relationships and business effectively. Learning agility is the eagerness and willingness to learn. Most importantly, implementing the learning to improve outcomes.
Change is a constant in business. Having agility drives you forward ahead of your peers.
3. Action Orientation
Simply, act. Be careful not to underestimate this skill. Executing your plans and actively working towards your goal is fundamental to success.
Time wasted on unproductive tasks lead to low performance, delayed deadlines and consequently, your goal not being achieved.
Getting things done, and done well, is a skill that makes you stand out. Focus on excellence, not perfection in your activity and keep the focus on the deliverables.
4. Creativity
Your creativity lends itself in times when you encounter a problem and need to be imaginative to find the solution. These are times when you can challenge the status quo.
By being different, you stand out from the norm and give your company the competitive advantage to become a leader in your market.
‘This is how we have always done it’ is the opposite to creativity. It limits ideas, change and progress. To be competitive you need to be courageous. Seek to fully understand your customer and end user and by doing so you will uncover ideas that will empower you.
5. Analytical
Being analytical is essential in critical thinking. Making decisions is important for your business to thrive. To make the right decisions, you need to have an analytical mindset to be able to decipher minimal information.
It is through the analysis of data that you can convert the information into actionable insights. Those insights into results. Understanding and interpreting facts into commercially beneficial decisions encourages creativity.
Developing these skills in your leadership team and across your workforce will improve your business performance and deliver exceptional results.
Hunton Executive can help you attract, recruit, and retain the highest quality talent so you can create a highly competitive business.
For a comprehensive guide to attracting, recruiting, and retaining your talent contact Hunton Executive.
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