He wanted to change. But he could not change. Because he had no time to change, he said. Which is fundamentally wrong.
There are two basic statements in relation to change. Change is the only constant thing in the world. And change is accompanied by the curve of change. The two result in the painful process of deterioration if you are drifted by the circumstances or you choose to run away. Or in the painful process of adaptation if you choose to fight.
Either way, it’s going to be painful, so it’s up to you to decide for which reason you are willing to take the pain. To remain in the game, take some learnings into consideration.
If you choose adaptation, you choose to try to win again. Making this choice already suggests that you are present and active in your life. The question remains whether you act out of instinct or you are conscious. Being instinctive is useful in many cases, but the more conscious steps you can take, the more mature your business is going to be. So how to be really active?
Passive people depend more on the outer world. They also let others, including the circumstances, influence their deeds. They tend to evaluate themselves by others. When things do not go the way they would prefer, they often use phrases like ‘I have no time for it’ or they simply blame it on the circumstances.
While active people take more responsibility for their own good. They are more focused on their inner self, they are aware of their needs and are ready to take a direct step towards satisfying it. They seem to be more determined and present in their wording like ‘I made this choice’ or they refer to internal aspects instead of the circumstances.
If you start listening to your own sentences and try to modify the wording to a more active version, you can start building up the active part of yourself in the time of change.
Ever wondered why some things in life seem to be in a huge delay? "C'mon, if we can send man to the moon, how can we not..."
It's the nature of change: it happens somewhere and it takes time to spread. Still there is a certain mechanism that can be observed.
Technology comes first and as we get to more settled, structured or rigid areas we see slower changes. This speed differentiation results in bigger and bigger gaps between the respective areas of life.
Think of digitalisation! Now almost anything is available in bits and bytes. Therefore you don't have to own things, you just need instant access anytime, anywhere. This is how the sharing economy is created and then business models changed. As a consequence, Uber is one of the biggest transportation companies even without a single vehicle, or Airbnb is one of the biggest accommodation companies even without a single room. But they struggle with authorities and taxation as the regulation is behind the technological, social and business change.
When you see conflicts like this, think of the law of disruption to understand or even manage them.
Why does the business need to seek growth at all? Fundamentally for two reasons.
One is the ever changing context. Even when you have set up the operation and you have optimised several processes, things change out of your company. You cannot control how technology evolves or what others do. And when others adapt some new technology, their business as usual gets something different. It only takes some time for one new approach to be more productive than your current one. Then you get to lose your rhythm and momentum on the market and you start losing transactions, customers and finally your business. Instead of this, you should keep up with the pace of the game.
The other reason is more internal. Searching for growth opportunities results in not just better performance, but also in getting new business potential, new methods of productivity or simply new tools. By questioning the status quo, you force yourself to experiment with something new and the experimenting itself keeps you vigilant and ready for action.
If your target is to only keep what you have achieved, it will keep you too comfortable, you will miss the train and at the end, you will start declining.
We consider some failures obvious. Startups are risky ventures, small family businesses are vulnerable and decent performance can be offset by the global economic crisis. Yet in some cases, even the great companies can fail and the reasons behind are valuable learnings for us.
It is not enough to be great, or to be great for a long time. You always have to adjust yourself to the ever changing circumstances. As darwinism says, the one who adapts wins. This adaptation is required even for companies that had great success during the years. Just think of Nokia who proved to be a great adapter when changing its profile from rubber to mobile device manufacturer and then failed when it could not manage the change smartphones created.
So here is a list of phenomena that may lead to failure:
Notice that failure can come from the practice of the past that we cannot get rid of or from missing the need of change that drives towards the future. In general, when you feel you are successful then you can miss something that requires your attention. Don't get used to the working patterns and systems, periodically challenge your successful operations, ask for external views if needed. Don't think that resources can substitute the genuine structuring of problems. And after a while, you might want to change the management even if they are doing a great job, because routines, habits make you comfortable and can kill your ability to adapt.
Though change is inevitable and it seems that it’s worth changing this or that from time to time, change can be harmful if it is only for the sake of change itself.
For example, marketers are said to be the first to get bored by their own marketing. The company might have a well working brand positioning with high performing marketing activities, but there is the fear of habituation, so marketers tend to reinvent their approach regularly. Nevertheless, every management, old or new, needs to demonstrate that they do not let things happen by chance and they intervene to reach new heights. No matter that a change always initiates the curve with a temporary setback. In (big) organisations, there are so many ongoing modifications at every moment that you cannot really distinguish the separate effects of the actions taken.
However, you should aim for separating those effects by timing or by different performance indicators so that you can be conscious about your actions.
The mastery of business management is about finding the right novelty, the right timing and the right way to implement it.
