A lot of optimistic energy is pulsing through 
the business and financial markets in these 1st few days of 2017. Perhaps more than in any other year since the Great Recession, “macro” conditions feel right for businesses across a wide swath of industries and markets to have breakout years. Here are 5 ideas to make it so for your business:
5. Push the Risk Envelope. When business and economic confidence are high as they are now, the right mindset when it comes to strategic decision-making is to push the risk envelope. As so eloquently proved in Michael Raynor's masterpiece, "The Strategy Paradox," the vast majority of executives take too little short term risk, and by so doing subject themselves to far greater longer-term dangers.
In essence, this is because most usually the real danger for a business is not its sudden or dramatic failure, but rather slowly sliding into technological obsolescence, commoditization, and a low to no profit economic model.
While this conservatism is more pronounced in times of recession, in good times it is doubly insidious because both the opportunity costs of being too conservative and the likelihood of risky initiatives being successful are so much greater.
A great shortcut question to ask yourself is: “If I had no considerations of time and money, what would I do?”
The answer will usually point you to the riskier, and more often than not, the more strategically correct business decision.
4. Embrace New Technologies. In the past few years, we've reached a tipping point as to the ability of companies of all types and sizes to earn quick ROI via implementing and utilizing business process technologies that allow for the completion of work more quickly and cost-effectively, and at a higher level of quality and consistency.
Cloud-based, on demand, proven and inexpensive technologies are available now for almost all business processes - from sales CRMs to marketing analytics, to project management software to HR, accounting, and finance.
And because of an almost overwhelming number of great software companies building new business process services (and because of SaaS, improving the ones they have almost daily), the cost of these tools continues to drop while their quality and efficacy rises. So let’s all make the business resolution to “try out” a new one of these tools each and every month in 2017 and see what additional marketing, sales, operational and financial efficiencies and improvements we can muster from them.
3. Pursue Global Markets. The volume of US exports hits new records year-after-year, and is projected to cross the $2.5 trillion mark in 2017.
Never before has it been a) easier to sell products and services globally b) have there been so many customers with money to spend the world over and c) has the reputation of US companies for technological leadership, quality products and ethical dealings been greater than it is right now.
So if you have a global growth strategy, build on it. And if you don't, get one.
2. Be Organizationally Creative. The maturation of business process technologies combined with the “flattening” and full-on “virtualization” of most modern work has created extraordinary opportunities for every company - no matter how small - to profit via organizational evolution, outsourcing, and fractionalization of work.
Things like organizing one’s enterprise via a mix of W-2 employees, 1099 contractors and outsourced technology, project administrative work low partners from around the globe.
My experience is that most of us intuitively get how this stuff works (as evidenced by how much of work we all now do on our mobile devices), but are still held back by a sense of how a “real” company should be organized.
The heck with that! All that should matter in decisions like this is whether it works - i.e. does it deliver higher quality at a lower cost? Everything else is just noise.
1. Have a Plan. Conditions are good. The world is our oyster. Let's commit, in writing, that we're going to make the most of it.
In the immortal words of Goethe, once a commitment is made, Providence moves too.
The spoils and thrills of victory in our so competitive but so opportunity-laden world go to those who devise bold plans of action and then go out and do them.
So let’s make great plans - organizationally creative ones that leverage technology, take intelligent risks and pursue and win opportunities around the world.
That sounds like a great 2017!