The challenge of change affects Businesses everyday, every month, every year. Once could argue the single most important factor affecting the health and longevity of Business is effectively addressing change.
The rate of which change happens is not an option. Successful business owners, Leaders and Executives are those who have developed the ability to operate confidently / successfully in a world of rapid change. There is method, technique and strategies to deal with Change in your Business that you cannot slow down or sometimes predict. Learning the Seven R’s for change and how you can identify where these principles can be applied will give you a greater sense of control, confidence and success in your business.
First there are thee major factors driving change; Knowledge, Technology and Competition. Knowledge and Technology is moving a light speed. Remember Video rental stores? How about Border’s book store or better yet at one time Sears Robuck was the number 1 company in the world. The rate of change on those industries in Knowledge and Technology along with those companies lack of addressing those when they were identified lead them to the end as quoted by Mr. Jack Welch.
What other areas today are in Knowledge, Technology and Competition rapidly changing? Taxi’s? Land line Telephones? Television programs?
A successful business owner, leader or executive needs to identify changes as soon as possible, then have Openness, Willingness and Adaptability to the change. Clarity, Zero – Based thinking and understanding your constraints are all baseline for you to succeed in addressing change. As promised here is a methodology of Seven R’s to get you started:
- Reorganization – requires you to find ways to increase outputs relative to inputs. Look at everything your business does for efficiency and effectivness
- Restructuring – means you move people, money and resources constantly to the activities that customers most value
- Reengineering – involves looking for ways to do things under the thought of: “Time compression by responsibility expansion”. How can you do more or different?
- Reinventing – means take a step back, look at your business. What you know now, what would you do differently?
- Reevaluating – is the step where you annually or twice year imagine starting your business over. How would you do what you do different? Should you?
- Rethinking – is the hardest of all the Seven R’s. This requires you to abandon your assumptions and look at your business with a new set of eyes and Mind.
- Refocusing – The final step in the Seven R’s. Time to act. Make the commitment to re-focus you and start to drive your business before change drives you.
Sometimes Business Owners, Leaders and Executives get in a rut because business is good. Even Small Business owners need to address these issues. A great strategy is to bring in someone to help you with ensuring your “rate of change inside exceeds the rate of change outside.”