The business world has produced a veritable graveyard of once magificently successful companies that came, conquered, and thrived — but ultimately perished. In many cases, those businesses share a common reason for their demise: Times changed. They didn’t. I have always been fond of the saying that if you don’t like change, you’re going to like irrelevance […]
The business world has produced a veritable graveyard of once magificently successful companies that came, conquered, and thrived — but ultimately perished.
In many cases, those businesses share a common reason for their demise: Times changed. They didn’t.
I have always been fond of the saying that if you don’t like change, you’re going to like irrelevance even less.
Over the years, many businesses discovered they didn’t change quickly enough, much to their chagrin. Others realized their old business model no longer applied, and they did adapt.
In the last decade or so, media companies especially have had to navigate their way through an extraordinary disruption of their business models.
Reading habits and advertising habits shifted. This meant media companies needed to diversify and be innovative if they wanted to continue to thrive.
With COVID-19 and the 2020 recession forcing companies to navigate their way through even more changes, businesses that want to avoid tumbling into irrelevance need to do the following.
• Review and rank their products. A few years ago when my company did such a ranking, I realized one product line the business had offered for years didn’t measure up and needed to go. It was hard to deliver, had low gross margins, was extremely people intensive, and had very limited scalability. The time, energy, effort, and capital we were investing in this product line were taking away our ability to invest in new products that would be more scalable and more profitable.
• Always be on the lookout for new ideas. What worked yesterday may not work tomorrow, so savvy business leaders are always open to new ideas for bringing in revenue. You should also encourage employees to suggest ideas. Maybe a lot of those won’t work. But the more ideas that get tossed around, the better the odds something will prove a winner.
• Favor facts and data over opinions. No matter how much entrepreneurs love the business plan they used originally to launch their business, they need to make decisions about the future based on facts and data. You must deal with the way things are, rather than the way you want them to be. Facts and data will tell you the way things are.
Because of COVID-19 and the recession, a willingness to adapt to changing consumer habits and ways of doing business is probably more important than ever. The businesses most likely to thrive coming out of this are those that have a plan, but also remain flexible and are willing to change that plan as the circumstances around them change.
Adam Witty, co-author with Rusty Shelton of “Authority Marketing: Your Blueprint to Build Thought Leadership That Grows Business, Attracts Opportunity, and Makes Competition Irrelevant,” is the CEO of Advantage/ForbesBooks (www.advantagefamily.com) which he started in 2005. The company helps busy professionals become the authority in their field through publishing and marketing.
