Quick WINs: Dr. Larry Little WINs by adapting and maintain relevance in today’s changing landscape.

By Ian Richardson, Managing Partner, Richardson & Richardson Consulting

Podcast Season 1, Episode 17 Guest: Dr Larry Little, CEO, Eagle Center for Leadership

Dr. Larry Little is a seasoned visionary, author, entrepreneur, and executive coach. As principal partner and CEO of Eagle Consulting, Eagle Center for Leadership, and the Enrichment Center Group, he walks with leaders both nationally and internationally. His executive coaching footprint spans from Kashmir, India, to Washington D.C. Additionally, he is a much sought after speaker and conference leader. Our conversation was awesome and engaging, and focused around the topics of maintain relevancy in today’s crowded and fast paced market, adapting to changes in and out of our control, and focusing on succession planning for the next generation of leaders. As always, I took notes on the conversations, and I have those notes here for your reference and use as you see fit.

1. Relevancy: Larry shared around the challenge of maintaining relevancy in a crowded marketplace. There are very few “blue ocean” spaces in the world – most markets have competition, sometimes fierce. Ensuring that your messaging and value is clear, easily accessible, and easily understood by your potential customers is crisis critical to maintaining a healthy growth trajectory. Larry shared an exceptional amount of wisdom on this topic that resonated with me as R&R plans for 2023 and beyond.
2. Adapting to change: One of the most interesting items that comes up on WIN is the concept of Covid and how people “pivoted” to adapt to the changes that were thrust upon us. Larry shared a story about how early in the pandemic, he unfortunately was diagnosed with Covid. This was pre-vaccine and had a significant impact on his health and ability to service his team and clients as a leader. That impact prompted a conversation with his team about needing to adapt to the world’s situation and pivot their offerings (which were all face to face) into a virtual setting, as well as how they captured learnings from that pivot and were able to incorporate them into the organization once the pandemic had normalized and Covid’s impact started being able to be controlled and reduced.
3. Succession planning: Larry is synonymous with leadership in my mind. As a great leader, he recognizes that everyone needs to plan for their replacement in an organization, and he shared an internal focus on succession planning occurring now at his organization to ensure that when the time comes, he can disengage from Eagle with minimal impact to the company, its team, and their customers. That focus on business continuity rings true with me, and even though my organization (R&R) is not planning on sale, we’ve focused on documentation and process development to ensure that we are able to migrate tasks and responsibilities from one team member to another at any time.

I gain so much value from meeting with fellow entrepreneurs and leaders. Each and every person I speak with brings their own experiences, knowledge, and viewpoints to the table, and without fail, I walk away with a head full of ideas and motivation to do better in my own business. I so greatly appreciate Larry’s willingness to come onto W.I.N. and share his story.

If you’re interested in joining me on an episode of W.I.N., it would be my privilege to host you. You can book your spot by visiting https://randr.consulting/connect and selecting the Podcast Booking option from the services menu. You can find previous episodes of W.I.N. on our website and subscribe to it on whatever your platform of choice is.

Always Forward,

Ian