“Great moments are born from great opportunity,” coach Herb Brooks said to the United States Olympic hockey team before playing the Soviet Union in the 1980 games. The prevailing opinion before the game was that the Soviets would win –  and win by six or seven goals.

How do many experts and pundits in the news media describe the current state of our economy? “Gloomy”? “Worst is yet to come?” “Runaway inflation”? The prevailing opinion is – we are headed for an awful economic cocktail of inflation with a recession chaser.

If you came to our Vistage meeting of business leaders this past week, you would have heard concern about inflation and the labor market. But you would have heard more conversation about the opportunities presented in this economy.

You would have heard about:

• An entrepreneur who has invested capital in new machinery and plans a rollout into new ventures by the end of summer;
• A small business owner taking advantage of an opportunity to grow his territory with new products and a service model to provide recurring revenue;
• A health care provider predicting a gradual demise of the current model in her industry and seeking new ways to leverage her expertise.

When you join a Vistage group, you must bring a sense of opportunity and optimism with you. Otherwise, just ride the elevator to the bottom floor.

We are not Pollyannas in our group. We understand that there is a lot of hard work ahead of us on the way to success. And our group is filled with people who care enough about each other to call each other out if a plan is not well formulated, if it relies too much on hope and not enough on action.

After a particularly tough scrutiny of one member’s plan this week, I thanked those who asked the tough questions. “You didn’t join a group like this because you want everyone to tell you how wonderful you are. You joined it because you want to work hard and reach that next level in your business.”

Coach Herb Brooks could have easily told that hockey team, “Good job. You’ve come a long way. There’s no shame in losing to the Soviet Union hockey team that is more experienced and bigger than you are.” But he didn’t. He told his team to seize the opportunity for greatness. And they did.

That’s what we do in our Vistage group.