Clear And Prescient Danger: The Importance Of Foresight For Your Business Did your mind automatically see Clear and Present Danger when you read the headline? I did mean prescient, and I'll get to the popular film title a bit later.
By Fida Chaaban
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
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Did your mind automatically see Clear and Present Danger when you read the headline? I did mean prescient, and I'll get to the popular film title a bit later.
It is a very necessary part of any budding enterprise that you at least try to predict future weaknesses and plan ahead. Yes, you've done so financially, and yes, you've probably laid out a staffing plan for when you decide to expand. But have you thought ahead in terms of reputation management, digital penetration or legal liabilities? These areas (and more) often go unnoticed by fresh entrepreneurs, only for an early misstep to come back and haunt them later. An integral part of being "ahead of the game" really means being ahead of the game.
Things like belatedly building a website, or putting off your brand's foray into social media for another six months: these are ways to create more work for later, and that often means it will cost you more as well. The longer you delay to address a potential exploitable Achilles' Heel, the more intensive the reparative work becomes when that flaw finally surfaces. If you're considering this from an unexplored avenues perspective, it's a clear-cut case of opportunity cost. "If I had done this two years ago, we'd be much better off now." Yes, indeed.
We've been fortunate to have some amazing entrepreneurs opine in the MENA editions of this publication. A few of them have discussed preventative measures, and a few have mentioned an instance describing an early lack of foresight costing them a lot financially once they'd reached their goal state and realized what was missing.
It's pretty great to hear, especially since it can prevent scores of businesspeople from overlooking those same details. I do actually put these measures to work- this is not just all talk. I've stressed on the importance of a clean digital footprint time and time again, and this is something I heavily monitor for my own personal social media accounts, the magazine's, and even members of our board. I do try and "predict" things that could potentially act as a future liability, and I try to nip these things in the bud before they can take on a life of their own and cause havoc.
If you have a hindsight-is-20/20 type story or you have ideas on being market and industry-prescient, please do write to me. I'd love to share your ideas with the region's entrepreneurs.
As an aside, for those of you who processed my title as the blockbuster film title, it's a sort of "typoglycemia." That's an Internet hybrid buzzword (not a clinical term) used to explain your brain making the necessary jumps to facilitate the understanding of language. Even editors need to have some fun.
