What is an opportunity? Opportunity is a chance or a potential in a situation or a circumstance to fullfill your goals.
Rarely will an opportunity arrive right in front of you, announce itself unambiguously and and wait patiently till you make your mind on your next move. Thus, many times we fail to convert this chance into certainty and achieve goal fulfillment.
Here I list the factors that determines one’s ability to accomplish an opportunity :
- Goal Clarity
- Opportunity Context & Identification
- Credibility
- Emotional Fortitude
Goal Clarity
Opportunity identification starts with clarity of your own goals and understanding of ecosystem in which you are seeking opportunities.
Define your goals. It may seem obvious, but many individuals and organizations don’t have goal clarity. Like it is said, “When you don’t know where to go, then any road will take you there.”
Lack of goal clarity implies lack of focus and clarity of arenas where you may discover opportunities. As a result, you may end up making efforts looking for opportunities in wrong place altogether.
Once the goals are defined and arenas where opportunities may lurk identified, the next important thing is to understand the ecosystem of the arenas where opportunities are sought.
Opportunity Context & Identification
What defines the opportunity context? The parts that define the context will vary depending on the goal and the arenas that you choose. For Instance – For someone targetting business development opportunities with a prospect or a client, the ecosystem will be defined by what business they are in, what are their goals, their internal capabilities & constraints, their business environment and competition.
This will help you build the contextual intelligence that will make opportunity identification a relatively easy task.
The contextual intelligence is the knowledge base using which
- Opportunities can be created
- Opportunities wrapped in ambiguities and uncertainties can be identified
- Problem, challenge or a constraint in the arena can be converted into opportunities
Credibility
Often we are unaware of or under appreciate the value of credibility in life. The credibility of individuals and organizations play a significant role in our ability to close an opportunity.
Lack of credibility implies, that despite opportunity identification or creation, we may get no chance or stand little chance to close the opportunity. And this precisely is the reason that corporations across the world spend billions of dollars in advertisement. The purpose is not only to make you aware of the products and services that they offer, but also to build their credibility in your mind.
And there is no short cut to building credibility. A blitzkrieg of advertisement campaign may help build a short term favourable image that may provide you a few opportunities, but sustainable credibility can be built only through products, services, support and commitment that meets the needs.
Emotional Fortitude
Emotional Fortitude is more of a individualistic attribute. And in case of organizations, it is demonstrated by the leadership team, that reflects in organizations hunger and attitude to win and deal with losses.
When an individual or an organization pursuits an opportunity, they may not win every time despite the investment and energy that they may invest in an opportunity. They will face challenges, both internal and external. Failure will lead to scrutiny and internal challenge to their position. Perhaps, that’s the reason, why leaders in many organization decide not to define a strategy. Strategy demands making choices. Making choices is sticking your neck out to the risks bundled with choices. And that demands emotional fortitude!
Opportunities are milestones that lead to goal fullfillment. Only the individual or a organization that has built up credibility through years of keeping commitments, has strong emotional fortitude to aggressively pursue opportunity and deal with failure, stands a fair chance to achieve their goals!
INVICTUS