Haris Ahmed Chicago Consultant Asks: Is Your Focus on What Could Go Wrong?

For Haris Ahmed, Chicago change expert and leadership consultant, there are only two types of people in this world: those who are always looking over their shoulder and those who are always facing forward. “What does this mean?” the reader may ask. Haris Ahmed of Chicago puts it another way; there are people who are always open to what could go right, and there are people who only focus on what could go wrong. Which one are you?

The mindset of an effective leader, for Haris Ahmed of Chicago, is focused on possibilities and opportunities. If the leader of an organization is focused on finding faults and flaws and is only concerned about what could go wrong, whatever plans they put forward is a disaster waiting to happen. How so? The plan was developed with failure in mind. This isn’t to say that all your plans will yield fruitful results if you’re focused solely on success. What this simply means is that if you’re planning with success in mind, you give your plans the ammunition to succeed, says Haris Ahmed of Chicago. If you’re planning with “what could go wrong” in mind, you base all your strategies from a place of fear. And fear shouldn’t be allowed to control your thinking because it will spill over your leadership, and ‘infect’ the entire organization, Haris Ahmed of Chicago adds.

In one of the videos about fear he chanced upon online, the speaker talked about how fear can get hold of your entire being to the point of keeping you stuck in a rut. When a person makes decisions based on fear, any situation is seen with exaggeration; giving it power to take over one’s life. One line that struck Haris Ahmed of Chicago the most from the video goes something like: “In three weeks, it would have been a month.” The speaker was talking about asking someone about how long he’s had the flu. Now do you see how fear can exaggerate situations?

To be an effective leader, you must nip fear in the bud. You do not give it room to fester, and you certainly do not give it its place of honor in your organization. In every situation, especially bad ones (think failure and rejection), a good leader sees opportunities. Remember Thomas Edison? He’s considered as one of the world’s greatest investors. One of his most popular and widely appreciated inventions is the light bulb. Haris Ahmed of Chicago shares this quote from the famous inventor:

“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”

One would think that after experiencing failure after failure, he would’ve given up. But he didn’t. He didn’t let the fear of failure stop him from pursuing his purpose.

To borrow today’s popular contextual “ism,” Be like Thomas.

As a parting thought, Haris Ahmed of Chicago asks this rhetorical question: “Isn’t focusing on what could go right so much better than carrying the burden of thinking what could go wrong?”