The life of a leader is challenging. As a leader, you're not only responsible for your own life, but also for the lives of your company, your employees and their families.

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The responsibility places great demands on you as a leader and as a human being and can be "tedious", as we say in Jutland. One of the biggest demands is that you must constantly consider the future and assess what it will mean for your stakeholders, including yourself.

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It requires attention and energy on your part: "What happens if country X invades country Y?", "what will it mean if there are higher import tariffs on commodity or raw material Z?", "what if interest rates or inflation rise even more?", "what could AI mean for us?" and other things that shape the future of your business.

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ALSO READ: Customer-centricity blah, blah, blah

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It's tempting to close our eyes and stop reading the news to eliminate the abundance of knowledge and new "problems" that flood in every day. However, the solution is not fewer problems, but how we deal with them. The handling that determines whether we are one of those who create the future for ourselves and others or whether we are one of those who become an insignificant pawn in the game of the future with all that it entails in terms of lack of opportunities to control our own and our company's destiny.

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You can't influence the "problems", but you can influence your and your company's ability to anticipate and manage them. And it's that ability to deal with them that will determine the future of you and your business.

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Training new skills and dealing with new things is always hard. As humans, we are "programmed" to be wary of new and "dangerous" things. Instead of changing, we do what we do, based on our experiences and unconscious reaction patterns. In other words, we become reactive in our approach instead of being open and proactive, which is a prerequisite for influencing the future.

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ALSO READ: Rock, paper, scissors - are you ready for 2024?

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But before you give up, I have two pieces of advice. We were all once able to be open to new input and had the ability to be imaginative and see possibilities instead of limitations. That's when we were kids, knew nothing and everything was new - and exciting. So, the one thing you need to do is to reconnect with the abilities you once had and still have hidden within you.

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The second thing is that you need to use that adult skill called "discipline". You need to work on the "problems" and don't skip the things that seem hard. You'll only regret it.

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A great tool to guide your disciplined work is a written, solid and dynamic strategy that helps organize your thoughts and tells you how to deal with the "problems" that are most relevant to you and your business. Of course, nothing will go according to plan, but it puts you in a much better position to be in the best possible position when the future hits.

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Do you want to influence your future or be an extra in the game of life? The choice is yours!

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This column was published in Jyllands-Posten business and FINANCE on April 18, 2024.

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"I'm on a high. A nice concrete tool that gets to the heart of the matter without the mess."

Lone Sejersen

Professional chairman of the board

in several companies

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