Being “Aware” in business must be a natural attitude in today’s world. Every Business owner, manager knows that he/she should be looking to obtain correct information about customers, his team, competition, market, government regulations, production, delivery, new trends etc.

Today business is evolving at the speed of light. What was true yesterday and what gave us a sense of certainty will be challenged today. So, the normal awareness will help us but not enough, there is a need to become “Hyper-aware” meaning taking things up very rapidly, if possible as the first one to notice it. 

This can only be reached by developing an attitude of curiosity, being really interested in what is going on in your markets. We need to be in touch again with our curiosity genes of our childhood. We have been putting them on the back burner. It is great time to beam them up again.

We need to develop the observation capacity of the best surfers in the world. There are three type of surfers. The first type of surfer is the one looking at the beach and gets a big wave over him and he wonders what’s going on, the second surfer is more alert and jumps into the water when the wave has already started, the third surfer has special observation capacities he runs into the water because he detected an upcoming huge wave. Most of the other surfers wonder what he is doing, and they truly do not understand it just until the huge wave comes out of the water and when he jumps on it and enjoys his ride. 

We need to develop this observation capability as a company to detect these upcoming waves. If we are faster than the competition, we will reap the fruits of it.  

In order to put our efforts in the right direction about hyper-awareness we need to define what type of information are we looking for, otherwise you will get a tremendous wave of information over you for which you will not have the time to analyse it? 

Draw up together as a team a list of critical information topics you would like to know more about. Please do not only stay watching and observing your field but also explore what is going on in other industries. You will be surprised about it and it will give you new ways of thinking of organizing your business to become more efficient and effective at reaching your company goals.

Make this activity a company activity, an activity of all. Each team member can bring in valuable pieces of information like the ones of a big puzzle. The more and the faster you obtain these pieces of information, the more rapidly you will have a better and deeper view of what is going on in your world. This will give you a competitive advantage. You do not need to be 100% better than your competitors if you already are 5 inches better you will advance faster.

Some suggestions to increase hyper-awareness:

• Detect the visionary people in your organisation let them express their thoughts. (You may have a Elon Musk in your company without knowing it)
• Start up a think tank about hyper-awareness.
• Ask more open-ended questions to stimulate your people to become more hyper-aware.
• Perform out of the box thinking.
• Go and have a look outside your field you will be surprised.
• Create a sense of urgency about this topic.
• Use the data you already have available in your organisation you are probably sitting on an unexplored goldmine.
• Use experienced data analyst with the right background. 
• Bring in people that inspire your staff about this topic.
• Become yourself more focused about hyper-awareness.
• Remind yourself where focus goes energy flows.

I wish you all great fun becoming more hyper-aware so please take a deep dive in your childhood. Believe me you will like it.