New Year’s Evolution – A Prerequisite to Change
Friday, January 20, 2012
Every year on December 31st, New York City hosts a plethora of hearty party goers in Times Square. Thousands of willing participants gather to usher in a new year filled with hope, prosperity and good will. Each New Year welcomed with a luminous crystal ball dropping to signify a bright future ahead.
Amongst the crowd of thousands are the socially connected, flooding twitter with affirmations of joy in 140 characters or less. “WOOT!!! 2012 is my year!!” and “This is my last cigarette!” are among the standard affirmations that quickly inundate the popular micro-blogging site. Over 16,000 tweets per second are recorded and eventually bring Twitter to a screeching halt.
After all of the hoopla subsides and confetti is swept away, we are left with a desire to fix the wrongs of the previous year by setting out with all intentions of making the New Year, our year. We start by creating a personal doctrine, a mental contract in which we become honor bound to live with a new set of rules, values or goals. These goals become our New Year’s Resolutions and for some, a new way of life but for most, just good intentions that quickly fade away into the day-to-day of life.
Businesses resolutions typically follow the same path as their personal counterparts and as such, suffer the same fate. A new year for a typical business begins with a look back at the year past. Meetings soon follow as teams develop plans to build a bigger, stronger, faster, smarter business in the twelve months ahead.
Some businesses succeed in their quest for reform however, most fail. The two biggest reasons for resolution failure are:
1. Change requires change. In order to do something different you must act different and for most, that is easier said than done.
2. Trying to change too much at once is like trying to boil the ocean, it can’t be done.
A resolution is simply the desire to make a change. Change itself requires an evolution. A quote that is often attributed to Naturalist, Charles Darwin comes to mind. “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is most adaptable to change.”.
Industries, business and markets change, it’s a natural progression. As our customers change, so must we. Changing to meet the latest trends embraced by our customers is not a top priority for most businesses. Change is typically thwarted by the affirmation that the latest “thing” is “just a fad”. Working outside ones comfort zone is, uncomfortable.however, if you don’t adapt - if you expect to find new opportunity and prosperity by continuing to do the things that you’ve done in the past -expect at some point for things to slide downward. Riding the momentum of something new, something different is a far better ride than that of trying to climb up from a hole.
If you don’t know what to do, doing nothing and doing everything are not the answers. Find the opportunity to move the needle forward in any way you can and once you get it moving in a positive direction, do everything you can to keep it moving.With that in mind, here are a couple of business tidbits to keep you inspired throughout 2012.
• Analyze your competition. Find their strengths and weaknesses and exploit their weaknesses to limit their strengths. Figure out what they are doing in the market and don’t do the same thing, do the same thing different by doing it better. As Walt Disney would say to his “Imagineers” whenever they brought a great idea to him, “Great idea but how do we plus it!”.
• Identify the areas that will provide the best customer connection. Where is growth happening in your industry? What changes are the customers embracing? What new tools are customers using? Start with one area and dominate then move on to the next.
We live in a fast paced world where the forward momentum of customer behavior dictates market trends and industry direction. Business success is reserved for those that set the standards, the thought leaders that push the envelope, dare to break norms and define where the bar is set, not by those that are satisfied with being part of the taxonomy of an industry.
This year make a resolution to stop being a reluctant bystander and forevermore become a willing participant in triumphant evolution – WOOT!