Your Team Is Managing the Downside. Who's Managing the Upside?

You know the meeting. Someone pulls up the numbers, and for the next hour the conversation is all risk, all decline, all downside. Big numbers. The room is locked in and it feels like the right thing to be focused on.

But here's what that meeting is quietly doing: it's training your team to only see half the picture.

When the conversation is only about what's going wrong, nobody is building the case for what could go right. The upside opportunities don't get named. They don't get owners. They don't get numbers. And what doesn't get quantified doesn't get pursued.

In this episode we walk through what it looks like to run a more balanced conversation — one that manages the downside with rigor and holds the upside to the exact same standard. No doom and gloom. No rose-colored glasses. Just both sides of the ledger, with real numbers against each.

The punchline might surprise you: when teams actually do this, the upside is almost always bigger than the risk dominating the room.

What's sitting on the upside of your business that nobody's putting a number to? Drop it in the comments.

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Benno Duenkelsbuehler 

CEO & Chief Sherpa of (re)ALIGN 

reALIGNforResults.com

benno@realignforresults.com 

Transcript

When Revenues Start Sliding

SPEAKER_00 0:00

We're managing problems, challenges, maybe declining revenues in a channel or in a category or in the company's uh revenues might be declining, right?

The Trap Of Problem-Only Thinking

SPEAKER_00 0:12

Um the danger is that we focus only on the problems and only on how to reverse, you know, uh those those negative sales trends or skyrocketing cost trends. And we don't don't make the mistake to not also think about the opposite side of

A Sales Meeting Reality Check

SPEAKER_00 0:36

the coin, right? I just came out of a sales meeting and everybody was talking about this is declining and that is at risk and the downside risk and downside risk. And I said, wait a minute, guys, what are the upside potentials here?

Name Upside And Put Numbers

SPEAKER_00 0:49

And let's talk and let's talk about those, give them names, and put numbers against those upside opportunities so that we can sort of manage the upside and fuel it and nurture it. And uh in a balanced way,

Balance Risk And Opportunity

SPEAKER_00 1:07

we don't want to be you know just one-sided doom, you know, doom and gloom, or one-sided rose-colored glasses, but we need to focus in a very balanced way on the downside risk and the upside risk and put numbers to both. And in the particular case where I just walked out of a sales meeting where you know all the talk was of you know six and seven figure downside risks, it so happened that the upside potential was more higher, a higher number than the downside. And unless we had put a number around it, we would have um made, you know, we would have made a mistake. So remember, balance both upside and downside and give me numbers to both.

Comment And Send Me The M

SPEAKER_00 1:56

Uh happy to talk through that with you. Uh comment uh down below, send me the M.