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Tag: Change

  • 15 Strategies to Help Leaders Overcome Resistance to Change | Entrepreneur

    15 Strategies to Help Leaders Overcome Resistance to Change | Entrepreneur

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    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    In the ever-evolving landscape of the business world, change is an immutable force, one that is indispensable for fostering growth and adaptation. However, the inevitability of change doesn’t negate the fact that even the most well-conceived and well-intentioned transformations often encounter formidable resistance from employees and stakeholders alike. As a change leader, your proficiency in skillfully navigating and surmounting this resistance is not just a valuable asset but an absolute necessity for the triumph of any transformational endeavor.

    This article delves into the intricate dynamics of resistance to change, dissecting the underlying factors that fuel this resistance, and it serves as a compass to guide change leaders toward effective strategies to quell such opposition. From understanding the psychology of fear of the unknown to addressing concerns of job security, we will equip you with actionable insights and proven tactics to foster not just compliance but genuine enthusiasm among your team and stakeholders during times of change.

    Related: The 5 Most Important Aspects of Leading Others in Times of Change

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    Taiwo Sotikare

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  • How the Fear of Innovation May Directly Cost You as an Individual | Entrepreneur

    How the Fear of Innovation May Directly Cost You as an Individual | Entrepreneur

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    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    I’ve been a lawyer for 20 years now. That’s mind-blowing to me because it seems like just yesterday that I was driving down to New Orleans for my first year of law school. But the fact remains, 20 years have passed, and I seem to be way better at getting injured doing harmless things than I was back when I was 23 years old. But what is really scary is how little the practice of law has changed in the 20 years since I started. Let me explain.

    Twenty years is a long time, but technology (good technology) existed back then. We had powerful desktop computers, laptops and handheld devices (queue the Blackberry jokes) that could still do amazing things, automating complex tasks and allowing us to communicate across the country with ease. Yet, when I would go to state court for hearings, we would use carbon paper (yes, carbon paper) to make duplicate copies of orders. If you needed a document from a prior case, you would head down to the clerk’s desk and ask for the redweld so you could leaf through the paper file. I would record my time in six-minute increments on a daily basis by writing it in pen on a paper time sheet.

    For the 11 years I was in private practice, nothing changed. In fact, I’m not sure anything has changed in the nine years since I left private practice. For all I know, attorneys are still looking for the least used piece of carbon paper to make sure they don’t have to press too hard to make a legible copy. Many court decisions are still memorialized solely in paper files or unscannable pdfs. There is an abundance of attorneys who are demanding a return to in-person hearings instead of virtual proceedings.

    Related: Why Embracing Change is the Best Catalyst for Growth

    The costs associated with ignoring innovation

    While this all seems amusing (and a little mind-boggling), it speaks to a larger problem in the legal industry and several other industries as well. The entrenchment of ideas and processes. The fear of the novel. The trepidation associated with changing things from “the way they’ve always been done.” I don’t mind tradition, and it most certainly has its place. But the fact is, there are real costs associated with doing things the same way simply because they are familiar and comfortable. And those costs can trickle down.

    Let’s take a basic example of in-person hearings. Back in the day, it wasn’t uncommon for an attorney to have to attend a status hearing in person, even if it was occurring across the country. That would necessitate airfare, lodging, meals, as well as additional travel time billed to the file. Depending on the number of attorneys involved in the case, it is not remotely inconceivable that an in-person hearing could cost the client five to ten times what a Zoom hearing would cost, maybe more. If the company has a lot of litigation, those costs will increase exponentially for each case on the company’s docket. In contrast, with a basic Zoom hearing, an attorney can now jump into the proceeding, inform the court of the status and jump back out, all while never leaving their desk. But not all attorneys like virtual proceedings. Because they’re novel … different.

    Related: The Power of Innovation

    Why should you care?

    Why do you care, you may ask? Well, those are costs associated with doing business that need to be mitigated or paid for somehow — which may mean an increase in prices passed on to consumers. Long story short, the impact doesn’t simply end at the company’s income statement and balance sheet. Even worse, those dollars could be better spent on human capital, technology, training, education, and yes, innovation.

    These issues aren’t relegated to the law, however. Insurance is a good example. There are now several exciting apps that allow you to document damage by using your phone. Some even use AI to evaluate and price the repairs. Despite these innovations, it isn’t uncommon to have insurance companies that require you to get an in-person estimate from an examiner or to take your car to a physical repair shop so the damage can be evaluated. There are costs on both sides of the transaction in those instances. You may incur costs by missing work and taking time out of your day, while the insurance company incurs costs associated with compensating the adjuster and/or the repair shop. These may get passed along to you through increased insurance premiums or in other ways.

    Does the adoption of technology and acceptance of innovation solve all of these problems? No. But there are consequences to ignoring innovation. The most direct are the ones described above which may be passed down to you as a consumer. But there are ancillary effects as well. The next amazing product may not flourish if the old-school mindset continues to dominate. The next great entrepreneur may never get off the ground because their idea flies in the face of hundreds of years of “tradition.”

    Related: 11 Innovation Strategies That Can Effectively Increase Your Businesses’ Growth

    Innovation and change can be scary — particularly if innovation threatens your job directly. But we now live in an innovation culture. For example, you can communicate across the globe from the palm of your hand. Tourists are going into space. You can ask a computer exceedingly difficult questions and get thoughtful and reasoned answers. None of this is going away. But there is still an abundance of entrenched old-school mindsets out there that continue to rail against new ways of doing things. Unfortunately, that can cost all of us. As mentioned above, there is certainly a time and place for tradition. And technology doesn’t fit for everything. But if we don’t at least consider the options out there, we all end up paying the price.

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    Collin Williams

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  • Sonya Bateson: Tauranga’s grim CBD needs change, progress and personality – Medical Marijuana Program Connection

    Sonya Bateson: Tauranga’s grim CBD needs change, progress and personality – Medical Marijuana Program Connection

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    The opportunity to build something great at Tauranga’s civic heart is a once-in-a-generation opportunity, writes Sonya Bateson. Photo / George Novak

    OPINION

    “It’s not all about economics.”

    These were the words of investment advisor Edward Guy at a Tauranga City Council meeting about the future civic precinct project earlier this week.

    The planned civic precinct, which

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    Original Author Link click here to read complete story..

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    MMP News Author

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  • 3 Steps to Overcome the Fear of Uncertainty and Daily Stress | Entrepreneur

    3 Steps to Overcome the Fear of Uncertainty and Daily Stress | Entrepreneur

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    In times of chaos and uncertainty, we often find ourselves overwhelmed, reacting impulsively to the stresses of the moment. It’s only later that we may realize we could have responded with more grace, poise and thoughtfulness. This lack of resilience often stems from depletion — when we are physically, emotionally or mentally drained, we become more likely to lash out or overreact when faced with unexpected challenges.

    Resilience is the key to responding thoughtfully to unexpected changes. However, depletion can hinder our ability to maintain a calm and collected demeanor in the face of adversity. As exemplified by Will Smith’s outburst at the Academy Awards last year, even successful and wealthy individuals can struggle to maintain resilience. Therefore, it is essential to replenish our reserves so that we can navigate whatever struggles come our way.

    Related: How to Let Go of Fear in Times of Uncertainty

    Resilience and daily rituals

    The Resilient Leader Assessment, a survey of over 5,000 business leaders and professionals, revealed that many individuals are operating with depleted reserves of mental, emotional, physical and even spiritual resilience. Of those surveyed, only 6% exhibited what we call “change-proof resilience,” with 34% being vulnerable to acute and chronic stress. However, hope remains — by establishing rituals to renew and replenish ourselves in these four resilience zones (physical, mental, emotional and spiritual), we can build our capacity to regenerate our energy reserves incrementally.

    It is crucial to practice resilience before we need it. We can do so by engaging in daily rituals such as exercising, meditating and taking breaks in the midst of our busy work schedules. With practice, we can also learn to react to unexpected situations in a more collected manner.

    Resilience is not just about bouncing back, but embracing change with unwavering strength and adapting to the winds of transformation.

    Related: 7 Ways to Build Resiliency in Challenging Times

    3 simple steps to help you overcome the fear of uncertainty and daily stress

    Our natural response to uncertainty and adversity is often fear-based, leading to a primitive fight-or-flight response that impairs our critical thinking skills. One way to inoculate yourself against fear generated by uncertainty is a strategy I call Pause-Ask-Choose. This is a method to help you reframe and discover opportunities when you are faced with any kind of challenge. When you feel stress and tension rising in your body, use that feeling as a reminder to:

    • Pause: Stop and take several deep breaths. Doing this is like rebooting your computer when it is slogging along under the strain of all the tabs you have open before it freezes. This pause is meant to create space for you to be conscious of this next, very important step.

    • Ask: This is where you can reframe and discover the deeper meaning in whatever challenge you are facing. Reframe the moment for your growth by asking questions like: “What’s the creative opportunity here?” or “What don’t I see?” or “What can I be grateful for?”. These types of questions might not provide the immediate solution or answer you’re looking for, but what they will do is provide a new perspective, which will undoubtedly open your mind to see the situation through an entirely new set of lenses. The effect will be cascading, and soon enough, the entire situation will look differently to you — just from pausing and asking.

    • Choose: Choose to ritualize your recovery for higher performance in the future. When we choose, we are consciously ritualizing small, daily practices for our personal recovery to create mental, emotional, physical and spiritual integration and harmony. This choice to deal with our depletion before it becomes a problem is truly a game-changer for our levels of energy and even our attitude and mindset going forward.

    The more we practice, the easier it becomes to replace our fight-or-flight responses and ritualize Pause-Ask-Choose as our default coping strategy. Taken together, the three steps give us a simple, repeatable formula for becoming a resilient agent of change, instead of a victim to it.

    Related: Mastering the Art of the Reframe Is the Key to Building Resilience. Here’s How to Do It.

    It may not happen overnight, but with consistent effort, we can rewire our default reactions and develop a new mindset that embraces change as an opportunity for growth. As we become more adept at pausing to reflect, asking ourselves empowering questions and making conscious choices to recover from depletion before it drags us down, we shift from being passive recipients of change to active agents who shape our own destinies. With each successful implementation of this formula, we build our capacity to navigate the ever-evolving landscapes of work and life and emerge stronger, wiser and more resilient than ever before.

    Each step in the right direction is one step closer than you were before.

    By choosing to ritualize our recovery through small, daily practices that promote mental, emotional, physical and spiritual harmony, we grow in our capacity to handle whatever is happening in the moment — resiliently. By prioritizing our well-being and replenishing our energy reserves, we can face unexpected challenges with calm, grace and poise. And in that moment, we have gained a distinct resilience advantage in a world that isn’t going to slow down anytime soon.

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    Adam Markel

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  • How Private Businesses Can Partner With Government Agencies to Facilitate Change | Entrepreneur

    How Private Businesses Can Partner With Government Agencies to Facilitate Change | Entrepreneur

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    Governments and political leaders are increasingly interested in investing in environmental and social projects to improve life, according to Under30CEO.com. Businesses are doing their part, as well. Many are pushing beyond vague corporate social responsibility initiatives and actively investing in measurable, money-backed welfare efforts through things like ESG 3.0.

    The impact of these initiatives is powerful and only increases over time, according to Under30CEO.com. However, the greatest change can happen when the two halves of the business and political world come together. Wealthy, profit-driven companies partnering with government agencies can create an explosive, synergistic environment.

    Here are a few recent examples of private businesses partnering with government agencies to facilitate real, tangible change.

    Enhancing animal welfare

    The welfare of humanity’s winged, finned and four-legged friends has become an increasingly important focal point. Younger consumers are interested in investing in improving the lives of domesticated and wild animals.

    CitizenShipper is a transportation platform that has been doing its part for animal welfare, too. The company is built on creating a community around the need to move things from one place to another. Since its inception over a decade ago, the platform has created jobs for an army of drivers who have helped move many priceless items across the country.

    Related: Considering a Government Program to Support Your Startup? Here’s What You Need to Know First.

    In 2018, the company gained momentum when it began to focus on its pet transport capabilities. The service became a trusted online platform where pet owners safely move their animals — over 100K of them to date — from point A to point B.

    Part of CitizenShipper’s success was fueled by its willingness to engage and work with the USDA with a specific focus on animal welfare. The company encouraged its drivers to become certified by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and worked to streamline the USDA certification process.

    “Pet transportation in particular presents unique shipping challenges and often requires consumers to navigate a confusing landscape,” Richard Obousy, CEO of CitizenShipper said. “The USDA provides a wealth of educational and other resources regarding animal welfare regulations and best practices, so as the #1 pet shipping platform in the US, we are always looking for new ways to encourage USDA registration and engagement with the agency among our large network of transporters.”

    It’s an initiative that is both historical and ongoing, too. The two entities continue looking for ways to educate pet handlers on animal welfare and make achieving the right certifications desirable. One of these is an animal welfare tutorial that the USDA is in the early planning stages; it would be available to any registered transporter. CitizenShipper, in turn, would award drivers who successfully complete the tutorial with a badge for their profile on the CitizenShipper platform, where transporters can distinguish themselves from others.

    Relieving pandemic pressure

    When the pandemic started in 2020, many companies had to make drastic changes. For a time, manufacturing facilities and assembly lines were unable to operate.

    This natural lull had a huge impact on auto-makers as the facilities of major brands lay idle. China’s zero-Covid policy meant parts were hard to come by. Social distancing mandates made operating facilities challenging. But the restrictions sparked something the private sector is renowned for: innovation.

    Several car makers, including Ford and GM, began working with the Trump administration a few months into the pandemic. The goal? To convert vehicle assembly lines into systems that could create ventilators. Ventilators were currently scarce due to their need to address patients with severe Covid symptoms.

    Related: 5 Lessons the Pandemic Has Taught Entrepreneurs

    Other companies also used the occasion to spark their creativity. Tesla and Space X worked on sourcing pre-existing noninvasive ventilators for hospitals to repurpose for their needs. Virgin Orbit began working on a brand new breathing device design. The collective effort of private sector companies and government agencies showed how fast collaboration can allay a growing need, even in a time-sensitive crisis.

    Improving health conditions in Africa

    When the hotel magnate Conrad Hilton passed in 1979, his charity, the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, was relatively small. However, after the death of its founder, the non-profit became the chief beneficiary of his estate. This supercharged its ability to create meaningful change practically overnight.

    Fast forward 35 years, and the Hilton Foundation made another leap forward by partnering with the CDC. The government agency and private nonprofit joined forces in 2015 to help improve WASH (water, sanitation, and hygiene) conditions in sub-Saharan Africa. The two powerful organizations became the nucleus of a cabal of other NGOs (non-government organizations) and local health offices. Together, the group worked to improve care and reduce disease in portions of the struggling continent.

    By connecting the wealth of private funding with the infrastructure of a government entity, the partners could implement more effective and sustainable interventions. These propped up rural healthcare facilities throughout the African regions in which they were operating. The CDC would use its experience to assess current conditions. From there, its nonprofit partners would create targeted interventions with measurable outcomes. The result was better standards and higher quality that filled WASH gaps in places where people suffered most from them.

    Government agencies, for-profit companies, and nonprofits each have their own ways of impacting the world around them. They already invest sizable quantities of time and resources into creating positive change.

    When these organizations join together, the results are almost always greater. When the private sector partners with government agencies, it creates a powerful incubator for change.

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    Under30CEO

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  • How Do I Lead My Small Business Through Constant Change? | Entrepreneur

    How Do I Lead My Small Business Through Constant Change? | Entrepreneur

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    When you’re running a small business, the balancing act of responsibilities and demands on your time and effort can feel overwhelming. Anyone who’s started or been involved with a small business knows precisely what it’s like to be in that place.

    There’s no template for navigating through the experience. There are incredible resources, influential advice, support systems and more. Working through turbulent times is a bit different for everyone, a specific path as unique as the individual and the business or organization they’ve devoted themselves to.

    At the end of the day, though, one truth remains. The singularly most important resource for any small business isn’t time or operating capital — it’s people. The people who get the company where it’s going, whether it’s a small team getting a project proposal to a client on time, someone handling IT issues when a system freezes or the individual who helps get supplies where they need to be. People are what matter; without them, there is no business, no supply or demand.

    Related: When Leading Through Change, Adopt These 4 Strategies

    Understanding the pressures on today’s workforce

    In the uncertain and chaotic world we live in right now, knowing how to navigate an unpredictable workplace keeps businesses and employees alike on their toes. Depending on the source, the job market has never seen a power shift to the employee as extreme as it has been. Or conversely, a vast portion of those who sought a better work-life balance and changed jobs or careers during the Great Resignation are now regretting their choices, finding that the proverbial grass isn’t always greener.

    There is a struggle to stay current on the consensus skillset that employers want to see in their workforce. The stressors of the perpetual advancement of systems and processes can feel relentless, with new — and not always improved — hardware and software around every corner.

    Taking the time to slow down and hone in on their workforce and the forces that impact them on a daily basis is one of the greatest steps small business leaders can take. These individuals and teams work to bring the potential of an idea or concept and turn it into something real. They are the ones impacted by change that is often easiest to make from the upper levels.

    Related: What’s the Future of Work? A Hybrid Workforce

    All change in the workplace carries a significant impact

    The changes made by upper management are often made with the best intentions to better the workplace and improve the possibilities of the future for the company. Those making the choices might see a change as a straightforward choice, made with the benefit of deep research and data to comb through.

    Individuals impacted by the change daily — if not hourly — may view experience very differently. From a shift in communications software to implementing a different payroll schedule, from working a hybrid set-up to adopting a 4-day workweek, changes, big or small, impact individual lives in a real, significant way.

    Helping employees process and navigate change is a crucial skill for any small business, from 10 employees to 100 — all workplaces employ people and every individual matters.

    Related: 10 Tips for Building a Happy Workforce

    Smooth change requires knowing key practices for all stages of the process

    The process of change in the workplace can be complex; this is no different than any other area of life, from helping a child handle outgrowing their toys to adjusting to water restrictions in California.

    Change is inevitable, but it doesn’t have to be dramatic — or traumatic. Everyone benefits when leadership is fully committed to ensuring a positive experience for employees. For small businesses, it is easier to consider the situation employees are in. Management can benefit from following several key practices.

    1. Encourage open communication. Whether within teams, between teams or flowing reciprocally from management to staff, communication during periods of change is critical. Consider having brainstorming sessions amongst teams while implementing a process for management to receive and explore the feedback
    2. Aim for clarity when explaining the intentions behind the change. Experiencing change without a choice — and without a clear understanding of why it’s happening in the first place — is a deeply unsettling situation for employees. A lack of clear communication of the problem/solution process resulting in the change will only breed resentment and impede a smooth implementation.
    3. Give your employees a voice in the process. Very little erodes trust between employee and employer more thoroughly than a lack of respect. Ignoring the input of those experiencing the change in the trenches will only impede the process and damage relationships and morale.
    4. Craft a timeline with a defined goal. Without a clear understanding of the implementation process and the timeline, employees can feel like their work is perpetually mired in the fog of change.
    5. Clearly and confidently define and communicate changes in expectations and employee performance evaluation. Office morale can severely suffer when employees lack a clear understanding of the expectations for a position or role. When change occurs, the reasonable expectation is that job performance metrics may change. If this isn’t addressed during the process, the confusion can fuel resentment and high-stress levels.

    Related: 4 Ways Leaders Can Navigate Change and Find the Hidden Opportunities

    Communication is the glue that binds a workforce together

    Little in life is predictable, which some could argue is the point. That unpredictability is amplified in the work environment — where livelihoods are directly impacted. Employees need more than lip service from their leadership; they’re searching for employers who know how to support their workforces properly.

    Change is a process, and true leaders are there at every stage of any change. Not only is that commitment crucial for ensuring effective implementation of the change, but it is a direct investment in employee wellbeing and company morale.

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    Summit Ghimire

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  • How to Use ChatGPT to Unlock New Levels of Innovation | Entrepreneur

    How to Use ChatGPT to Unlock New Levels of Innovation | Entrepreneur

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    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    ChatGPT is everywhere, but we are only scratching the surface of the potential for such generative artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities. There are incredibly exciting opportunities for its role across innovation and research and development (R&D) just underneath the surface. Determined to find the answer, our innovation team dug deeper.

    If you haven’t already begun experimenting or implementing the generative language model developed by OpenAI into your business processes, you’ve at least heard of ChatGPT. The chatbot has garnered significant attention in the AI community and beyond due to its human-like and conversational abilities—the service reached 100 million users in less than two months.

    While the true threat or promise of generative AI will continue to be debated, it is more than certain that businesses can unlock real value for innovation by leaning into the application’s advanced language processing capabilities. New levels of consumer insights, more efficient processes and faster ways of working are just beneath the surface. To put the tool to the test, we used ChatGPT to simulate how we might drive new product development.

    Related: Here’s How Your Business Can Use 3 Popular AI Content Creation Tools

    1. The ideation process: quality input yields a quality output

    The answer you’re looking for depends on how you frame the question. Not as simple as it sounds! ChatGPT leverages a massive body of data from across the internet (over 570GB of data —approximately 300 billion words) to quickly answer user questions. And the question’s specific phrasing, wording, and context significantly influence the response.

    Say you are looking for the next great innovation in laundry for a consumer products company. According to a report by Grand View Research, you already know that the global market for laundry care products is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 4.9% from 2021 to 2028 (ChatGPT could also tell you this if you didn’t know). You could simply ask, “What will be the next disruptive laundry product?” ChatGPT will then list a few potential directions for disruptive laundry products like sustainable laundry solutions, smart laundry devices, multi-functional products, etc. The response is interesting and might help affirm some initial thinking, but probably nothing you didn’t already know.

    But what if you tried a more creative angle like, “What do people love about laundry?”. This question is not as intuitive. But the insights from ChatGPT are potentially much more interesting and lead you to build a deeper understanding of consumer behaviors and emotions to anchor the next great innovation or product design.

    Image credit: Francesco Fazio | openai.com/blog/chatgpt

    Questions that lead to more questions lead to potential insights. This is the true power of a tool like ChatGPT. But it all starts with the question, and it pays to think about exactly what you want to know and how to frame the question.

    Related: What Does ChatGPT Really Mean For Businesses?

    2. The discovery process: less time researching and more time thinking

    Underlying all innovation is discovery, from contextual (market research, trend analysis) to behavioral (ethnographic immersion). It is essential but incredibly time-consuming.

    ChatGPT can do in seconds what traditional research might take hours and days—quickly gather information on a wide range of topics, sort through the data, and provide a view of what is important and what isn’t. Say you thought of four potential ideas for new laundry products, and now you want to gauge their relative attractiveness. You can ask ChatGPT to rank them for you based on their potential appeal to customers and even go further by asking ChatGPT to think about the types of customers that these ideas would most appeal to.

    Image credit: Francesco Fazio | openai.com/blog/chatgpt

    Just like the internet made encyclopedias obsolete, ChatGPT is turning traditional research on its head. In a matter of seconds, ChatGPT was able to rank new product ideas and provide a point of view of appeal by customer segment. This shortcuts the initial, more time-consuming research and allows you to go deeper into more specific areas of interest and shift your focus to higher-order tasks.

    Related: Will ChatGPT Become Another Race to the Bottom in Marketing?

    3. Preparing to go in market: accelerating the creative process

    Companies are already starting to use generative AI to handle most basic and transactional customer interactions. But ChatGPT can also lean into the more creative process as well. Want to brainstorm copy for a marketing campaign? Or draft your new company’s mission statement? Or create a starter list of KPIs for your growing sales team? ChatGPT can quickly help you get started.

    For example, let’s say you have built a new stain removal product and are ready to launch in market. Using ChatGPT, you can quickly brainstorm potential concepts for marketing campaigns and help draft advertisement copy. Your creative team now has a starting point to evaluate further and refine. Let’s say your team aligns on a campaign centered on eco-friendliness, ease of use, and stain-removing power. You can go a step further and ask ChatGPT to create compelling posts for social media. Here’s what you’d get:

    Image credit: Francesco Fazio | openai.com/blog/chatgpt

    Not bad, huh? Seeking opportunities to implement generative AI in tasks like these can help significantly accelerate and enhance your go-in-market strategy.

    Generative AI and the future of innovation

    The applications for generative AI do not just have potential; they are already changing the game’s rules for innovation. New concept development, accelerated research and discovery, and go-to-market strategy are just a couple of opportunity areas to leverage generative AI.

    However, it’s not going to replace human decision-making. We know that the massive body of data used by generative AI tools is already available content. In fact, the data underlying ChatGPT is only current up to 2021. So not only is it somewhat dated, but it also can’t replace true primary research.

    As long as you know the data you are working with and its strengths and limitations, generative AI’s abilities can still be incredibly powerful. And how much benefit it can provide comes down to knowing what questions to ask, where to dig deeper, and how to translate that knowledge into real action.

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    Francesco Fazio

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  • Why Your Whole Team Needs to Be Involved in Company Change | Entrepreneur

    Why Your Whole Team Needs to Be Involved in Company Change | Entrepreneur

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    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    Heraclitus, an ancient Greek philosopher, said that change is natural and constant. Nowhere is this adage more alive than in the business world; the entrepreneur’s origin story is built on change.

    Recently, Frontier Airlines enacted a change by removing its customer service phone number. This leaves customers to find solutions through digital channels. With this change, the customer experience will transform entirely, creating a significant difference in the organization. This approach will allow Frontier Airlines to uncover insights that might inform, validate and challenge its strategy.

    Making a bold choice such as this can be difficult, which is why many leaders and founders struggle with change.

    Related: Would You Rather Change or Let Your Business Die?

    Why is change so hard for a growing business?

    Many businesses insist on leaving transformational leadership in the hands of a small group of senior leaders or change managers rather than making it part of their team’s mission. Maybe because change is so crucial at the beginning of a venture — the scrappy entrepreneur needs to disrupt, innovate, sell their home and live in a basement. Then a company’s relationship to change changes.

    A familiar disappointment for company leaders is the feeling of getting slower as they grow. The profile of people who start and join a small company is vastly different from those who join as the company grows and becomes more stable. Stability becomes the preference and inertia the enemy.

    The demands of a company’s growth stage can reveal individuals’ unproductive relationships to change. These relationships can be put into three categories. Receivers of change believe change is being done to them. Resistors to change believe they can wait out the change, and controllers of change ultimately believe they can plan and manage their way through it. Being big doesn’t have to mean being slow or putting change on the back burner, and entrepreneurs can overcome these unproductive attitudes.

    Organizations growing most sustainably continue to disrupt at all stages of growth. The ability to continue to adapt and outpace the changes of the external environment requires change-ready leaders at all levels.

    What are the benefits of a change-ready organization?

    Companies with change-ready teams can tackle and rise above the challenges of their environments more easily than teams that rely on top-down change management. Companies that insist on only entrusting change to a select few leaders are bound to find a lack of change, engagement, diversity and connection with customers. We’ve already established that change is constant, and leadership needs to reflect that in order to have a change-ready culture.

    Here’s what sets change-ready leaders apart:

    • They’re more engaged. They understand that emotional agreement precedes strategic alignment, so they seek to bring everyone’s voices to the table.
    • They’re more adaptable. They are open to their teams’ conflicting views and assumptions and can adapt to the increasing rate of change in the environment.
    • They lead with a mutuality mindset. They know that diverse teams generate even stronger ideas that consider key risks and ensure their teams think from customers’ perspectives.

    Perhaps the most important benefit of developing change-ready team members is that researchers believe that “employee attitudes to change are key predictors of organizational change success.” People who see change as a constant and necessary source of opportunity are best positioned to turn change into positive forces for their organizations.

    Related: How to Better Manage Corporate Culture During Times of Transition

    How can leaders nurture change readiness?

    Instead of managing change from the top down, leaders could find that a more sustainable way of staying change-ready is to engage the whole team. How can leaders begin to cultivate a change-ready mindset among team members? Here is a playbook of initial strategies to try:

    1. Accept that change isn’t linear

    Change is messy. It progresses one day and falls back the next. Many leaders operate under the notion that periods of change in their companies will be followed by periods of calm or that change will eventually end. This is a misconception; business is change, and creating conditions of change readiness will be more enduring than making temporary preparations to handle a specific change.

    Therefore, leaders should adapt their mindset around change in their companies. At BTS, we know that change is no longer an individual sport but a team sport. Rather than a few elite surfers trying to conquer the waves, we see change more like white water rafting, where everyone must work together to make it through the waves.

    2. Build awareness of your own relationship to change

    Before you can successfully lead anyone through change, you need to heighten your own self-awareness of your productive and less productive responses. This starts with a biological reality: Although change is coming at us faster and more frequently than ever before in human history, biologically, we are wired to respond to change as a threat. In the past, threats to our existence were lions, tigers and bears; in the modern change-filled world, threats are things such as looking bad, being wrong or losing control.

    The first step any organization can take to build more change readiness is to help every leader understand their beliefs around change and offer them new tools and approaches to be more effective. This is the approach we took with a Fortune 200 company that, in anticipation of significant structural shifts for the organization, equipped all 50,000 employees with new tools and techniques to build resilience and change readiness.

    Related: 5 Key Ways to Create an Innovation Culture

    3. Engage your team to take ownership of change

    Identify the pivotal moments your organization faces in leading change and align on what change-ready behaviors look like in each moment. Cultivating a team of change-ready leaders will mean engaging team members in what change means. Share the targets and outcomes of strategic direction meetings, allowing time to hear all perspectives and test different ideas on the front line. Invite people to tackle those challenges themselves in their roles so that they feel ownership over the pivotal moments where change occurs in a day.

    To support this team-level ownership, shift behavior in the smaller moments that matter most. Back this up by creating the social networks and support structures that enable a wholescale mindset, giving each level and department a chance to own its change readiness.

    Change is constant, and it is a team sport. No one leader or manager can author change by themselves and expect it to serve the whole organization and a whole world of customers. Sustainable, successful change comes from a collective of people who feel positively about change: a team of change-ready leaders.

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    Anne Wilson, Kevin Bronk, and Kelsey Raymond

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  • Master the Ability to Pivot Your Business to Jumpstart Success | Entrepreneur

    Master the Ability to Pivot Your Business to Jumpstart Success | Entrepreneur

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    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    Business plans are like mining for gold. Miners had to start with only an educated guess on an area, canvas a stream, then pan and sift endless piles of dirt. Prospecting is largely gone, but it’s a useful metaphor for how business leaders take a problem, solve it, refine it and continually revisit and adapt — even to the point of tearing down the essential points of their business. This ability is called “intellectual range of motion,” and it’s one of a business leader’s most important tools — especially if you’re selling your expertise.

    Peloton, for example, continues to display this intellectual range of motion. While it had a few pain points — lower subscription growth, stock redemption issues and a wave of layoffs — Peloton shows a willingness to explore and change direction.

    Today, Peloton has 5 million customers and is worth $3 billion. However, despite significant brand equity, Peloton is substantially changing its business model. The company is muddying the waters of the service-based business vs. product business dynamic and rolling out a “Fitness as a Service” product where people can access Peloton’s training and instructors without the bike itself.

    Related: Why Founders Should Always View Pivots as Opportunities

    Intellectual range of motion: A powerful tool

    The extent to which an idea can be altered based on an entrepreneur’s intuition and imagination falls under their intellectual range of motion. A wide range of motion enables an entrepreneur to turn an idea into a revenue growth opportunity. In contrast, leaders of firms with narrow intellectual ranges cannot recognize an opportunity because of the limits of their imagination.

    Intellectual range of motion is more highly valued in a founder of a services business than it is in a product business. This is because services are much more malleable than products. For example, modifying a product to take advantage of an opportunity might require sourcing new raw materials, reconfiguring an assembly line, re-writing software code, developing a new manufacturing process and more. With services, there is none of this, so the time from idea to execution is measured in days and, sometimes, hours.

    As a founder myself, I have grown my firm by increasing my intellectual range of motion. For example, the sector I operate in, business mastermind communities, is over 200 years old with a few hundred firms. All of these firms are horizontal providers, meaning they do not serve a specific vertical industry. My firm, on the other hand, serves a single industry — the professional services industry.

    This industry specialization has appealed to many and has allowed our firm to grow consistently. The idea for this form of differentiation was found in another business entirely: SaaS. The software category has matured, and many successful SaaS companies now specialize in a vertical industry. My idea was this could (and should) work in the business mastermind community sector — and it has. Recognizing a winning strategy in another industry and successfully porting it into a different one is an example of intellectual range of motion.

    Related: Is It Time to Pivot Your Business? These Are the Only Two Signs You Need to Look For.

    Key strategies to improve intellectual range of motion

    For entrepreneurs and founders who want to gain better intellectual ranges of motion, there are a few critical actions to take:

    1. Ask: What does the world need from me right now?

    This question is not asked often enough. The reason this question is neglected is that business owners fall into the routine of delivering what they have always delivered. Due to the benefits of the experience curve, the more often a firm provides a service, the lower the cost and the higher the margin. Business owners are driven by profit and will not discontinue a profitable service line until absolutely necessary. As a result, they stick to their knitting too long and miss opportunities. Over time, this behavior restricts one’s intellectual range of motion.

    Blockbuster Video once provided us with a remarkable service: hit movies watched at home for rent. They stuck to VHS tapes but missed mail-order DVDs and video streaming. They went bankrupt as a result, and we now all binge-watch Netflix content. Blockbuster Video no longer fit the market; the market had evolved to services that came to them and, eventually, to fully digital and personalized streaming platforms. This is something founders in professional service firms have to ask themselves consistently to remain competitive in the market, but the lesson remains for large companies like Blockbuster as well.

    Related: Don’t Make the Same Mistake Leaders at Kodak, Blockbuster and Xerox Made When Disruption Comes to Your Industry

    2. Locate wasted resources in legacy operations

    A common reason new ideas that could lead to break-out growth opportunities aren’t pursued is that entrepreneurs incorrectly think they do not have the resources. However, the resources they need are available, they are just consumed with legacy operations.

    Legacy service offerings are ripe for optimization. Entrepreneurs should look for ways these services can be delivered with far fewer resources. These newly liberated resources could be allocated to today’s wild idea that could be tomorrow’s golden goose.

    Related: 4 Mistakes to Avoid While Scaling Up Your Infrastructure

    3. Produce a roadmap of future offerings

    It is best to organize the service-offering roadmap by identifying boundaries. Today’s business and tomorrow’s business are always competing for scarce resources. There is only so much money, time and talent to go around. In the absence of a roadmap organized by time boundaries, today’s business wins the competition for resources. A roadmap makes sure tomorrow’s business gets the resources it needs.

    For example, boundary 1 of your roadmap should be defined as offerings in the market for the next year. Boundary 2 should be defined as an offering in the market in two years’ time. And boundary 3 should be defined as offerings in the market in three years’ time. By landscaping out the roadmap in this fashion, an entrepreneur’s intellectual range of motion is increased by stimulating their imagination.

    Related: 6 Ways to Push Your Limits and Accomplish Things You Never Thought Possible

    Business leaders looking to jumpstart their success — or simply maintain it — should look to see how they can improve their intellectual range of motion. In the long term, they may just strike gold.

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    Greg Alexander

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  • Entrepreneur | Free Webinar | March 8: Pivoting to Success: When and How to Pivot Your Business

    Entrepreneur | Free Webinar | March 8: Pivoting to Success: When and How to Pivot Your Business

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    Are you struggling to make sales?

    • Is your competition increasing?
    • Are you having cash flow issues?
    • Are you feeling defeated and not sure what to do next?

    These may be signs you may need to pivot your business. Don’t know where to start? In this informative webinar, award winning entrepreneur and prominent investor Kim Perell, will reveal why pivot is an essential part of building a successful business. As market conditions change and technology evolves, so must a company’s ability to adapt. Through her own riveting real-life examples, Kim will break down the reasons why pivoting is crucial for companies of any size and how you identify if it’s time to make a change.

    Register today to learn about topics including:

    • Why pivoting is crucial for companies of any size
    • Recognizing 3 signs of when it is time to pivot
    • The 5 pivots every leader faces
    • The one thing never to change in any company
    • Developing the winning mindset to adapt to change

    Join us for this free webinar on March 8th at 3:00 PM ET.

    About the Speaker:

    Kim Perell is an award-winning digital marketing technology CEO, top US female angel investor, and bestselling author with twenty years of experience taking companies from $0 to annual sales to $1 billion. She sold her last company for $235 million after going broke ten years earlier. She has been named one of AdAge’s Marketing Technology Trailblazers, Business Insider’s Most Powerful Women in Mobile Advertising, and Entrepreneur of the Year by the National Association of Female Executives. Perell has been profiled by The New York Times, Forbes, and more. She lives with her husband and two sets of twins in Miami. Connect with her at https://kimperell.com.

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    Entrepreneur Staff

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  • How Leaders Can Embrace Change and Keep Thriving Through It

    How Leaders Can Embrace Change and Keep Thriving Through It

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    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    If you’re anything like me, when you reflect on the past year, you find yourself reeling from what feels like a punch to the gut. At the start of 2022, businesses were grasping for new hires amid a nationwide employee shortage and trying to decide upon a flexible work plan that was right for them. With 2023 now underway, many organizations are steadying their sails for what increasingly looks like an imminent downturn by tightening budgets and issuing hiring freezes.

    Navigating change will be the anchor for leadership in 2023. As a business leader, you already recognize that change happens constantly. Economies fluctuate between recessions and expansions, share prices increase and decrease, innovative technologies and industries disrupt businesses, and so on.

    The typical response to change can vary greatly depending on the person and the current environment. Some want to jump to immediate action, while others take a wait-and-see approach. It’s only natural that we as humans — and as leaders — get comfortable in our present state and find a rhythm for success, only to then get thrown off by change.

    But what if instead of simply reacting to disruptions, we turned them into opportunities for innovation and growth? Here are some key strategies I’ve found useful to successfully navigate change — and even embrace it — as 2023 kicks into high gear.

    Related: 7 Ways to Stay Resilient in Uncertain Times

    1. Reframe change as untapped potential

    Seasoned leaders know that handling change is always going to be part of the job. The key is for leaders to see that change can be a good thing, and to reframe change as an untapped opportunity for employees.

    A few years ago, we made the proactive decision to upend our business model and undertake a massive digital transformation. Things were not going poorly for us — we were doing better as an organization than we had in a long time. But our CEO at the time believed there was a better way to serve our customers: by transitioning to a digital-first subscription model. And if that proved to be true, it was going to be much better for our clients and our organization.

    I was tasked with testing the model with a subset of salespeople and clients, where results quickly proved the idea viable. But it was not an easy decision as a public company to transform our business. We needed to address everything — what we sold, the way we sold, the way we engaged clients, the financial model of the company, how we recognized revenue, how we accounted for our sales, how we went to market and more. In one way or another, every touchpoint of our business had to change.

    Throughout that process, we knew that if we couldn’t capture the hearts of our people, this change would fail and the benefits we envisioned wouldn’t be realized. As leaders, our job was to help everyone in the organization understand that, while we didn’t have answers to every question, ultimately this move was right for them and our customers.

    We often believe that leadership is about having the “big idea.” But the idea is only the starting line. Leaders need the willingness to confront reality, adjust, get input, adjust again and bring people along. That’s the real work of leadership.

    Related: How to Get Comfortable With Change and Build It Into the Foundation of Your Business

    2. Create a plan for better change management

    When it comes to change management, I have seen organizations of all sizes on every part of the spectrum. Some business leaders have done an incredible job of developing change management plans that are agile and of which their entire workforce is on board, while many others have not.

    Having a change management plan is both a failsafe for organizations and a safety net for employees. It’s a clear signal to employees that you as a leader know change is coming and can be trusted to lead the organization through what’s to come. Creating a great change management plan includes forecasting what changes you expect — and what you as an organization and your individual departments specifically will do to come out ahead.

    3. Communicate your plan and lead out by example

    Start by getting in touch with your own personal reactions to change. As you do so, your empathy with your team increases. Harness that empathy; it’s key to helping your team persist when the going gets tough.

    Empathy plays a major role in communicating effectively with your team. Successful leaders directly engage their people in change. A change management plan is nothing except words on paper if you as a leader don’t communicate it and get buy-in from your people.

    No matter the size of your organization, one of the best ways to communicate your change management plan is to get employee feedback early on in the process. Be a sounding board and listen as they voice their concerns over the anticipated change. It’s essential to meet people where they’re at to successfully gain their support for a change management plan. Try not to focus too much on the process — humans make up your teams, so be human in your approach.

    Related: Want to Make Your Workplace More Human? Here Are 4 Foolproof Ways.

    4. Encourage leadership at every level

    Once you’ve received buy-in and communicated with your employees, trust your leaders to take the helm and begin implementing the plan within their individual departments and teams. With each small win, your leaders will find the courage and motivation to continue moving forward with your change management plan. They will know they can turn to you as a resource for voicing concerns or providing direction, but they will also know that you trust them to make important decisions and carry the initiative forward.

    Over the past decade, we’ve worked with hundreds of organizations to equip them with the skills not only to develop change management plans, but also to create change-ready cultures where people move from fearing and disliking change to embracing and thriving through change.

    As we look to the months ahead, don’t be afraid of what’s to come. You’ve navigated uncharted territory before and you’ll do it again. Use these insights and work with your employees to create a change management plan that is right for your organization and you will steadily sail — even through the storms — and come out ahead on the other side.

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    Paul Walker

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  • 5 Effective Ways to Prepare for the Unexpected

    5 Effective Ways to Prepare for the Unexpected

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    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    Let’s face the hard truth: We are never fully equipped with adequate information to predict — for sure — what will happen in the next couple of days. For businesses, this could be an interrupted cash flow when an investor pulls out of a deal. It could be a lockdown that stalls your plans to advertise your new brand at the next regional convention. Who knows?

    When unexpected events happen, a business must adapt quickly or risk going under. Interestingly, the fate of a business — especially a startup — lies mainly on the shoulders of the founders.

    How founders respond to unanticipated events varies. Some are reactive. Others are proactive. While the latter is better, we all have limits. Frequent exposure to the unknown can cause anxiety and other psychological strains that can be your business’s undoing.

    How many unexpected and unpleasant events can you endure, and how quickly can you navigate through them? That’s a difficult question to answer, I know. Here are five ways that you can prepare yourself.

    Related: How to Prepare for an Unexpected, Unwanted and Unwelcome Business Setback

    1. Assess your capabilities objectively

    As founders, you’ve had to wear many hats in your company. You’ve assumed the roles of HR, operations and even finance. You’ve developed skills you never knew you had the abilities for.

    All these experiences can spark the belief that you’re single-handedly capable of handling anything that comes your way. Although this confidence in your abilities is good for entrepreneurs, it could lead to the Dunning-Kruger Effect, which is defined as “a cognitive bias whereby people with limited knowledge or competence in a given intellectual or social domain greatly overestimate their own knowledge or competence in that domain relative to objective criteria or to the performance of their peers or of people in general.”

    Successful entrepreneurs have accurate knowledge of themselves and their capabilities. They also understand the people they work with and have great confidence in their abilities.

    By quickly realizing that your capabilities are not suited for an unanticipated event, you will be better disposed to seek help from those that are better suited for the situation at hand.

    2. Use “buffers”

    Running a business is all about making plans, setting deadlines and pursuing them. Things don’t often go to plan, and deadlines are missed. These are quite expected, but at times, things may spiral in the wrong direction, and chaos could ensue.

    To avoid chaos, founders need to keep their heads high and remain on top of the situation. One way to do this is to create buffers.

    You can start by surrounding yourself with social buffers — familiar individuals that make you feel very comfortable. These could be family members, buddies or close colleagues. Having them around when events take a wrong turn can reduce your chances of acting impulsively out of anxiety or fear.

    Time buffers are very helpful, too. When the unexpected happens, business operations are expected to continue. As you set deadlines, you should consider increasing the timeline of each milestone by about 20%. This will provide enough time to navigate unexpected events without threatening upcoming processes.

    Related: 4 Ways to Make Sure Your Business Survives the Unexpected

    3. Maintain a healthy network

    When quick, unpredicted market changes threaten business survival, founders often seek assistance from outside their organization. Most times, founders seek out other founders in similar situations to help themselves figure things out.

    Many M&A deals during the Dot Com bubble burst — one of the most challenging times in our recent economic history — happened between founders within the same network. The relationship between Elon Musk and Peter Thiel is a typical example.

    Your network may not be there for only M&A opportunities. Sometimes, you need to assess your direction against theirs from time to time. If your industry is volatile and moving in a new unforeseen direction, it will do you a lot of good to know how your colleagues are going about it.

    4. Always look at the big picture

    Founders must recognize that unexpected events can be a good thing. It brings opportunities. Paradoxically, being fazed by the challenges that come with the unexpected can blind you to those opportunities.

    It’s best to paint a big picture of your business. Clearly define your grand mission. And keep an open mind as to how that mission can be accomplished. Things don’t always have to work out the way you planned them. But they will work out.

    Just like road trips, a wrong turn of events can make you reconsider your route. It could take a little longer to reach the destination. As long as you have a clear big picture, you will be more likely to stay in control of the situation.

    Related: 4 Ways to Prepare Now so Your Business Survives the Unexpected Later

    5. Finally, practice willful acceptance

    Unpredicted changes in your business or industry may create new challenges. Sometimes, we are required to solve these challenges. But what can you do if you neither have the capabilities nor resources to solve them?

    You can simply accept the issue and commit to other things within your resources and capabilities. Studies have shown that acceptance and commitment can reduce your chances of acting anxiously when you’re fazed by a fortuitous event.

    Also, the challenges created by the occurrence of these events may not be yours to solve, even though you have the skills and resources. You have to accept this, too.

    Founders must learn to use resources efficiently. If there is an already existing solution that could be creatively used to solve a problem, you should try that out first before committing to creating a solution. This will save you lots of time and resources.

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    Judah Longgrear

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  • 5 Ways to Prepare and Thrive In the New Economy

    5 Ways to Prepare and Thrive In the New Economy

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    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    Experts have been predicting a new economy for a few years now, and astute observers and analysts can already see that it is here. While several catalysts drive the acceleration, exponential technologies, the global debt bubble, changing demographics and the recent pandemic are a select few.

    Even those that are most change-resistant amongst us agree that the world will look very different by the time this decade ends. However, many folks are still in denial, succumbing to denial-led obsolescence. Several paradoxical changes in the new economy conflict with old-school thinking and need diametrically opposite approaches. The foundations for the new economy are built on the paradox, which makes it hard for old economy folks to transition out — unfortunately, many will not make it.

    Related: Shift Your Mindset and Actions to Embrace Change

    The shifting landscape

    The term “new economy mindset” refers to a way of thinking and approach to business focused on innovation, adaptability and modern technology to drive growth and success. This mindset often involves a willingness to take risks, embrace change, think outside the box to stay ahead of the competition and remain relevant in today’s rapidly changing economic landscape.

    “The pace of change has never been this fast, yet it will never be this slow again.” – Justin Trudeau

    Related: Why You Need to Think Outside the Box

    Old economy: baggage patterns

    I have seen a few different patterns of baggage which hamper progress and block the transition or success in the new economy.

    1. Resisting truth

    Understand yourself, watch your reactions and analyze if you resist every new technological change like artificial intelligence, metaverse, cryptocurrencies, autonomous driving, etc. Missing out on the first wave of success in the new world makes people upset, and you either play victim or adversary — neither is helpful in your transition into the new world. But if you take positive action, understand the opportunity and dimension the risks, you set the foundation for growth.

    It is also important to remind yourself that these shifts are fundamental whether you like them or not. If these changes cannot be bent to your thought process, you change your thinking and adapt or get left behind. People who have built nothing and have opinions about sticking to the old economy are already obsolete and often subject to ridicule.

    2. Living in the past

    Many of us have had very successful careers in the past decade or two; this success hinged on skills, background and ability to do things in a certain way. However, as the turf changes around us and the new realities of the new economy unfold, many people hold on to security from the past to masquerade their insecurity. While nostalgia is a great feeling, it blinds people to the progress around them.

    “Progress is impossible without change; and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.” — George Bernard Shaw

    3. Sense of entitlement

    Holding some title in an old economy enterprise neither makes you current, relevant or sought after. There is a high probability that your skills have not developed outside the realms of your responsibility. Spending many years in large archaic companies disconnects people from ground realities and turns them into administrators.

    To succeed in the new economy, one must get hands-on, play with the dirt, make mistakes, look stupid and even be mocked. The definitions of scale have changed; complexity is now defined as doing more with less headcount and more innovative technologies. If your company’s T-shirt gives you a sense of handling a complex job or a sense of entitlement, it might be time for some introspection.

    Related: Is That Your Title or Your Entitlement?

    New economy: skills and attributes

    There are multiple skills required to succeed and thrive in a new economy. When playbooks from the past don’t apply, one needs to upgrade their mindset. A mosaic of skills and attributes must be imbibed and cultivated.

    1. Navigate uncertainty and ambiguity

    We are no longer in a linear era and do not have a well-charted course to follow as a professional or a business. Unpredictability, lack of clarity and disruption are rampant, creating the need to navigate uncharted territory.

    The new economy, by definition, is volatile, disruptive and fast-changing. People used to predictability and practices which worked in the last decade must adapt to survive.

    2. Be a connector

    Mastering relationships and building networks are the currency of the new economy. Social capital must be built, acquired, and grown to drive effectiveness. True connectors understand this well and have ingrained this into their operating model inside and outside their company, i.e., they are a mini ecosystem in themselves. Being a connector creates opportunities and a sense of community and provides a platform to thrive in today’s fast-paced, breakneck-speed world where it’s easy to lose the human touch.

    3. Develop a personal brand

    Many people network or even get visible when they want something. In the new economy, your brand must be managed daily as the volume and velocity of opportunities not even on your radar move fast without you. If your brand is strong, visible and recognizable, then it attracts opportunities, and you drive your goals. If this is not something you do, it might be time for a mindset change and attitude upgrade.

    Many old economy companies cripple the personal brand narrative by throwing obsolete reasons like self-promotion or lacking humility. These cultures cripple ecosystem enrichment and limit innovation, and it eventually reflects on their financials.

    Related: 8 Reasons a Powerful Personal Brand Will Make You Successful

    4. Abandon comfort zones

    The days of lifelong employment or even milking your skillset for a decade are long gone. Jobs, companies and industries all get disrupted and replaced. Sometimes your skills, as relevant as they may seem, become obsolete within a company or industry without even coming to your notice. One should constantly be learning (and unlearning) and adapting to market shifts.

    A personal brand and your network help stay on the cutting edge. Be firm on principles but flexible on methods — it can help individuals and organizations avoid becoming rigid and inflexible, making it difficult for them to adapt to changing circumstances and stay competitive.

    “If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.” — Wayne Dyer

    5. Let go of your experience

    There is never a guarantee that experience gained in one organization will make you successful in another — there are too many variables like structure, culture and incentives which influence behaviors.

    Many playbooks, practices, mindsets and beliefs from the past have taken a toll on companies and industries themselves. Expertise is valuable, and experience is baggage in the new economy. People with mindsets rooted in past success and proven and established strategies must look at things afresh and analyze where they stand.

    Often, old economy beliefs may be characterized by a lack of innovation, a reluctance to embrace new technologies, and a focus on short-term gains rather than long-term success. Unlearning is as important as learning to make the transition.

    Concluding thoughts

    Overall, the key to overcoming these barriers is recognizing the need for change, investing in resources, and embracing new ways of thinking and working. Individuals and organizations can adopt a new economy mindset and thrive in today’s rapidly changing economic landscape.

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    Nitin Kumar

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  • Why High-Performance Culture Is Critical to Business Success in 2023

    Why High-Performance Culture Is Critical to Business Success in 2023

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    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    With 2023 business planning underway, business leaders are setting priorities for the next year and beyond. For some, the focus may emphasize productivity or roll back certain benefits like flexible working schedules.

    A high-performance culture improves productivity, bringing higher profits and happier employees, improving talent retention and continuing a growth cycle. A cornerstone of 2023 growth should be building or maintaining a high-performance culture for all businesses. Refraining or forgetting about culture in 2023 is a mistake, as it plays a critical role in company performance.

    Related: How to Create a Work Culture That Can Survive Anything

    Understanding the importance of high-performance culture

    A high-performance culture allows an organization to succeed and grow. This type of structure is good for business and for each employee. Not every high-performance culture will look the same, yet every organization with a high-performance culture values workers and holds their trust in return.

    Employees may come to work partly for a paycheck, yet evidence suggests they crave meaning from work and are more productive when they get it. Like everyone, workers want to feel a sense of purpose and mission in their daily lives and enjoying the same at work is only natural.

    The best cultures embed their mission throughout the employee experience, honoring and furthering these values daily. These cultures also offer their employees interesting and engaging projects which drive their sense of belonging to the organization. A recent survey by McKinsey showed workers across all levels of income believed having an interesting job was as important as earning a solid income.

    Related: How to Develop a Company Vision and Values That Employees Buy Into

    Workers feel fulfilled by purpose-driven work. Unfortunately, many employers ignore culture in favor of focusing on profits. Workers need clarification and connection in these types of work environments. In a survey from Gallup, only four in 10 employees strongly agreed they knew what their company stands for and what differentiates their company from competitors. Even for organizations that articulate their values often, management could be viewed poorly if employees do not see the connection between the values and the organization’s actions.

    When leaders grow nervous about their businesses’ future, it can feel tempting to ignore culture at the expense of profit. In fact, culture becomes even more important in times of economic uncertainties. In these moments, employees will look to management to set the tone. Without a culture fostering engagement and collaboration, workers could lose productivity to stress and conflict.

    Related: Why Purpose-Driven Entrepreneurs Focus on the Bigger Picture

    How to build a high-performance culture

    To build a high-performance culture, first, understand how your culture functions. Employees usually understand culture best simply by judging their own level of satisfaction. Their daily experiences are typically defined by coworkers and frontline managers more than company management. Leaders who do not work with frontline managers daily will likely need to speak with employees to understand their experiences.

    Signs of an underperforming culture could include low employee retention, low productivity and frequent workplace conflicts. Not every employee will be satisfied, even in the highest-performing cultures, but consistently unhappy employees reflect serious problems. Direct, private conversations between employees and HR can offer insight. If employees seem reluctant to speak candidly, much-needed feedback via surveys can provide ways to track improvement.

    After gathering information about employee experiences, HR may wish to prepare a report assessing culture as it stands. Strong cultures should clearly understand which policies contribute to the culture and how to continue them. Doing so will help preserve civilization in the face of future business difficulties or leadership changes.

    On the other hand, struggling cultures need to identify the most negative factors of their culture to begin changing. High-performance cultures feature strong leaders, actively engaged employees, ongoing workforce development, strong communication and adaptability. If employees are disengaged, find out whether imbalanced workloads, micromanaging, lack of flexibility or absence of trust could contribute.

    During this process, employees also feel their input is genuinely welcomed, which it should be. Psychologically, employees accustomed to a toxic culture may fear expressing their true thoughts, mainly if their frontline managers previously engaged in verbal abuse or insults. Build this trust by taking accountability to admit that culture has not met the mark and protect employees who voice their concerns from retaliation.

    Each leadership level, from the C-suite to frontline managers, plays an integral role in rebuilding a company’s culture. The positive vision set forth at the top needs to be actionable. Once the vision has more tangible attributes, through structure and processes, each level of leadership can provide the necessary training and easily communicate these goals on how they translate into the fabric of the company.

    A high-performance culture is often viewed as optional. That cannot be further from the truth. A high-performance culture is the backbone of an organization, providing a strong framework for business growth. Moving into 2023, culture should be central to every successful business strategy.

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    Steve Arizpe

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  • 3 Critical Lessons When Changing Your Business and Journey

    3 Critical Lessons When Changing Your Business and Journey

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    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    Leadership isn’t easy, nor is entrepreneurship. Bringing a new idea or concept to market is a dream for many, but it can often feel daunting. When reflecting on my journey to CEO, I recently asked myself, what are the three important lessons I would tell my younger self?

    I came up with the following: Always listen to your customers, choose progress over perfection and get your employees involved. Keeping these lessons in mind will help your quest for entrepreneurial excellence and change in your business. Here’s why I think so.

    Related: Entrepreneurship is Risky. Follow This Less Risky Path For Entrepreneurial Success

    1. Listen to your customers

    When changing your business or product, customers will usually react in one of two ways. On the one hand, they may be receptive and open to change. Often, this occurs when the change doesn’t require a significant shift in customer behavior. Customers don’t want to be pushed too far outside their comfort zone (or their existing process), so if the change requires a substantial shift in attitude or perhaps a change in how they interact with your business, they might be more resistant.

    Knowing this, it is essential to listen to — and acknowledge — their concerns. As a leader, you probably won’t be able to solve all their problems, but by listening and acknowledging, you can move people down the path toward accepting changes. In addition, you’re supporting the notion that they are on the same team as you, which helps bolster change.

    Another effective way to reinforce a new belief is to focus on “peak moments” — i.e., specific parts of the consumer decision journey that have a disproportionate impact and that consumers tend to remember most.

    Peak moments often include first-time experiences with a product or service, touchpoints at critical milestones in the customer journey (such as the first renewal cycle), and other moments of intense consumer interaction (and reaction).

    Related: How to Quickly Adapt to Change and Future-Proof Your Business

    2. Progress over perfection

    In today’s competitive start-up landscape, it is tempting to strive for perfection when launching a new product, idea or solution — especially those of us with an engineering bent. No one wants to go to market with something that feels “less than.” However, grasping for the goal of perfection can be a barrier to real growth. Like the well-worn aphorism says, “don’t let perfect be the enemy of good.”

    Without making mistakes and allowing the chance to improve, we’d never know what success looks like — that’s the danger of letting perfection be the enemy of good. And honestly, it’s those ups and downs that make entrepreneurship life interesting.

    Related: Seek Progress, Not Perfection: Why Your Business Should Embrace the “Toothpick Rule”

    During my career, I have witnessed the transition in both thinking and execution from so-called waterfall to agile — essentially moving from sequential to iterative. It is a huge difference maker in quickly demonstrating (or not) progress. While it might sound scary to release something small and seemingly incomplete, realize that as consumers, we have grown accustomed to that approach of consuming new products and processes — think about the last mobile app you downloaded.

    Don’t be afraid to challenge yourself and your teams to take high-risk and high-reward opportunities. Taking the time to experiment, learn from problems and discover new solutions is all part of the process. It not only allows you and your business to grow but encourages your team’s development as well.

    3. Get employees involved

    While the C-suite garners a lot of attention and credit when a company performs well, each employee is part of the beating heart of the organization and plays a vital role in enacting change. So, think holistically about change from the bottom to the top.

    To make this happen, as a leader, you should strive to cultivate an environment of trust, curiosity and learning. Leaders must build trust rather than undermine it to spark a sense of commitment and create a culture of motivation and professional development in their business. This helps encourage more discussions and synthesis about what is and isn’t working.

    Also, companies that make innovation, transparency and trust a core value of their culture often attract similar qualities in the employees they hire. There is no doubt that the next generation of talent is making waves in the workforce landscape. From the pandemic to the Great Resignation and Quiet Quitting, there’s a shift in what employees look for in their employers.

    The needs of each employee and organization differ, but generally speaking, it’s not surprising that employees want to be valued and take responsibility for high-value initiatives. To be clear, success here starts with attracting talent that embodies your company’s values.

    Related: Entrepreneurs Are Struggling With Mental Illness. Here are 5 Ways to Manage Your Mental Health As An Entrepreneur

    Moving forward

    All in all, change in your business, your products and the market can and should take time. Accomplishment doesn’t happen overnight. Be open and wise to this. Also, be prepared to learn as you go. There is a difference between reading about and experiencing these lessons firsthand.

    And perhaps most importantly, don’t underestimate what your team can accomplish when given a clear vision and the resources to execute — empowerment is the secret sauce of top-performing organizations.

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    Jim Contardi

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  • How to Get Comfortable With Change and Build It Into the Foundation of Your Business

    How to Get Comfortable With Change and Build It Into the Foundation of Your Business

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    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    Life in business is a never-ending series of ebbs and flows. The moment we learn to surf one wave, conditions change and we must paddle furiously to catch the next.

    Change is a constant, not a single passing event. As leaders, we need to prepare accordingly. No matter how high the swells or how many times we get knocked off the board, we can’t afford to take our eyes off the wave we’re on or those looming on the horizon. Great change leaders know how to live in the present and the future, they know when it is and isn’t appropriate to implement change, and lastly, they know how to embed change resilience into their organizations.

    Related: How to Become the Change-Enforcing Leader Every Company Needs to Scale

    Stay laser-focused on the now, but live in the future

    To be effective, leaders must learn how to distribute their focus between the present and the future. They need to be able to pour everything they have into the work at hand without losing sight of future goals and potential roadblocks. Every new CEO I’ve coached describes this duality as one of the most unnatural yet vital muscles to develop.

    Success requires aiming for the best-case scenario but preparing for the worst. This ability is crucial during times of crisis, distress or macroeconomic headwinds. When you’re prepared for anything that might happen tomorrow, you can focus intently on the work that needs to happen today.

    How to know it is time to change

    It can be tricky to identify when you need to make a change or what that change should even be. Balancing the evolutionary mandate for change with the human need for stability is paradoxical. If you change too much and too fast, your customer may lose track of your core identity. If you change too cautiously and too slowly, your customer may deem you irrelevant. Sometimes leaders can become so accustomed to change that they reflexively make changes without adequately assessing the situation.

    A leader I recently worked with wanted to blow up a well-constructed organizational design only a year and a half after implementing it. Had the leader not paused to assess, she wouldn’t have realized that the root cause of her frustration was competitive behaviors between divisions rather than the structure itself. As such, the most important thing a leader can do is take a metaphorical breath and do a proper assessment.

    While there isn’t a playbook that outlines all the reasons to change, there are some common indicators that, if present, should put leaders on alert. Here are three important ones:

    1. Growth has stagnated

    This is an area in which leaders must be vigilant and proactive — if you allow your growth to slow without intervention, you risk falling behind, sometimes never being able to catch up. That said, a business’s growth could stagnate for various reasons, and leaders shouldn’t jump to conclusions and rush to overhaul their entire company due to one slow month. Know that your “spidey sense” or CEO intuition is not enough. Check in with employees, pulse customers and utilize data to diagnose your market. Whatever surfaces from your analysis, if it is significant and within your control to change, you need to pounce on it.

    2. You see negative attitudes and behaviors

    There is no such thing as perfect or bad behavior. Negative attitudes will always pop up, but when those behaviors and attitudes take on a more regular presence, it’s clear that something is wrong. It could be as simple as a toxic employee or group of employees undermining the business. What happens if attitudes and behaviors become pervasively negative? There’s rarely a quick fix, but the change mandate is quite urgent because you have a cultural issue. Just as culture takes time to build or unravel, your intervention must be realistically phased over time and highly intentional.

    3. When disruptive threats emerge

    Competition can be healthy, pushing all to grow and expand their offerings. However, if you have diagnosed a threat beyond mere competition, this is a time for intensive thinking and bold action. Consider Facebook’s adaptation to Meta. After facing brand-damaging internal leaks, intense scrutiny from the public and a huge blow to their advertising business due to changes in Apple’s privacy practices, they rebranded to the name Meta and pivoted their long-term strategy to the Metaverse.

    Related: 5 Key Ingredients to Become a Successful Change Leader (and Home Baker)

    Build change into the system

    People crave stability in the workplace, so how can leaders create a culture that prepares employees to adapt and change as needed?

    A willingness to adapt begins with a strong foundation. Communicate your company’s mission, priorities and vision for the future with all employees. When your company’s purpose is clear, employees feel at ease knowing the foundation from which all change stems and can trust it is not arbitrary. Furthermore, they can quickly identify when something is not aligned with priorities and needs to be adjusted.

    From this foundation, create space for reflection, dialogue and learning. Bring in new perspectives and encourage (and fund, if possible) employee learning. Meet frequently to discuss your priorities, goals and visions for the future, ensuring all are in alignment and adjusting as new information comes in. At my company, we assess our business quarterly through board meetings and team-wide retrospectives. My executive team also meets annually for a team offsite to determine our strategy and ensure we are all aligned on priorities for the coming year.

    Related: How to Be an Adaptable Leader and Use Change to Your Advantage

    Strengthen your muscle for change

    Don’t let a day go by without asking if there is anything you need to change. What is your core focus, and what should you prioritize? Are there any future roadblocks you’re not yet seeing? Learning to balance these conflicting needs all at once is challenging — straddling the present and future requires immense cognitive and emotional energy. Yet, when you’ve navigated those waves and smoothly glided to the shore, I don’t think you’ll regret those aching muscles. You might turn around, ready and eager to get right back out there.

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    Jonathan Kirschner

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  • Ethicality Has Developed a Tool to Help Make Impactful and Ethical Shopping Decisions

    Ethicality Has Developed a Tool to Help Make Impactful and Ethical Shopping Decisions

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    Shoppers have not had ready access to information they need to make responsible shopping decisions and thereby enact change in the world.


    SALT LAKE CITY, November 19, 2022 (Newswire.com)
    –
    Consumers have grown increasingly concerned about the influence and power of large unethical companies. Few people feel comfortable supporting businesses that employ children, blatantly disregard laws, or pollute our beautiful Earth. But the overwhelming majority of people lack the information needed to determine which companies are deserving of our dollars and which companies they should avoid at all costs. To make matters worse, the information on the ethical nature of these companies that has been compiled is either expensive, hard to find or is geared specifically towards investors. This leaves the average consumer bereft of vital information to make informed shopping decisions. Ethicality is a brand new business here to give consumers the tools and information necessary to make informed and ethical shopping decisions.

    Ethicality works using a simple web extension that has access to its ever growing database of information where it pulls the information on a company either by analyzing a product page or by searching directly. The information that is given is simple and straightforward, easy enough for anyone to understand and make a good decision with.

    Ethicality service overview:

    • Shoppers don’t have ready access to the information needed to make responsible buying decisions
    • An easy to read format that gives quick information on whether a company is ethical or not.
    • The power to enact change through useful social and environmental information
    • A seamless integration into a chrome browser that does all the background work.
    • Feel good about shopping decisions.

    About Ethicality

    Founded by a pair of friends with a good idea and a desire to help people make good choices. Our goal is to spread awareness of the misdeeds of large companies and support small businesses that are doing great things for the planet and society. See more at ethicalityco.com and download the extension for Chrome here.

    Source: Ethicality

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  • 4 Ways to Use the Past to Capture Success

    4 Ways to Use the Past to Capture Success

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    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    I always tell my students that “your history is not your destiny.” While that’s true, I’ve come to realize that your history can be valuable. You can gain so much from the past if you use it properly so that it trains your brain for success.

    Rewire your brain with the past

    I’m guessing you’ve heard of neuroplasticity, the brain’s capacity to change and be trained. They call it “synaptic pruning, ” meaning that seldom-used neuropathways lose their power and frequently-used neuropathways get stronger.

    To be successful, you want to strengthen neuropathways that lead to success.

    This is where the past comes in and why often you’re told to “forget the past.” Our natural tendency is to remember the negatives of the past, what we didn’t accomplish or what didn’t work out for us. Doing this strengthens pathways that make us doubt ourselves or feel afraid. But we can use the past differently to support more positive neuropathways.

    Related: 8 Steps to Move Away From the Past You Need to Leave Behind

    Use the past to grade your progress

    “The way to measure your progress is backward against where you started, not against your ideal.” — Dan Sullivan.

    In The Gap And The Gain, authors Dan Sullivan and Dr. Benjamin Hardy write that when you’re going after a goal, the gap is everything between where you are now and where you want to be.

    The gain is how far you’ve come, from where you started to where you are now. Most of us focus on the gap; how far we still need to go. We hardly ever acknowledge the gains we’ve made, the distance we’ve come, or how much we’ve accomplished.

    But by dismissing the gain, you’re wasting a great opportunity. “Success breeds success,” and success builds confidence, right? When you notice and applaud all the challenges you’ve successfully overcome, you strengthen the “overcomer” neuropathway.

    When you consistently acknowledge all those good ideas you implemented, or times you stepped out of your comfort zone, your brain starts seeing accomplishment as the norm for you. If you dismiss your progress and focus on what you haven’t yet accomplished, you’re strengthening that stressful “not there yet” feeling, which does not add to your confidence.

    Try it for yourself. If you’re having a tough day, look back at where you started on this journey to build your business. Think about how far you’ve come, the obstacles you handled, and the big and small wins. Give yourself a big high five for all the gains. How do you feel?

    Related: How Studying History Brings Success

    Use the past for learning

    “An experience only becomes valuable and useful once you’ve transformed it into a gain.” Benjamin P. Hardy

    A friend of mine has a client who is a highly successful business owner. Whenever this man makes a big mistake, he says, “well, that lesson was cheaper than my college education — and probably more valuable!” He’s decided that every experience, especially the rough ones, gives him something he needs to learn. So, he’s very conscientious in figuring out what that lesson is.

    It’s not always easy to figure out the lesson right after a significant setback. But if you don’t find that gold nugget, your brain might jump to false conclusions, like thinking you are not good enough for success. Instead, turn it into a gain by finding the lesson.

    You can also do this with experiences in the past because the person you are today has a different perspective than the person back then. Try taking an incident in your past that still feels like a thorn in your side. What lesson could you gain from it? Did that experience make you stronger, wiser and more compassionate? Now, whenever you think of it, be sure also to remember what you gained from it.

    Use the past to be more effective

    “Positive thinking will let you do everything better than negative thinking will.” — Zig Ziglar

    Dr. James Gross, a Stanford psychology professor, ran a study to see how our emotions or state of mind affect what we do. His team studied 60,000 people for an average of 27 days. They found that when people were in a bad mood, they avoided challenges and even slacked off. They tackled the challenging but necessary work when they were in a good mood. In other words, to get good work done, it helps to be in a good mood. And you can use the past to get there, even if today is getting you down.

    Start by remembering when you felt proud, happy or especially confident. Maybe it was when you aced your third-grade spelling test or got your first job. Maybe it was going to your high school prom or stumbling across a fantastic waterfall on a hike.

    The key is to really get into that experience and feel what you felt back then. Give that memory a keyword like “waterfall.” Then find another great memory and re-experience that one. Pull out these great memories and re-experience them whenever you need a boost. After a while, you’ll find that even just saying the keyword can bring in that great feeling.

    So, rather than just “moving on” from your past, use it as a tool to build your business. Focus on the gains from your journey and celebrate them. Find the gems of learning from past experiences, especially the “bad,” and learn from them. Use your wonderful memories to enhance your mood so you can tackle those challenges. It’s true. Your history is not your destiny. But when you use your past properly to condition your brain for success, it can be a valuable ally.

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    Krista Mashore

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  • The pandemic forced innovation, but the expected recession may force businesses to do even more

    The pandemic forced innovation, but the expected recession may force businesses to do even more

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    The effects of COVID-19 forced companies across many industries to adapt and innovate rapidly. Yet even as the pandemic subsides, there are opportunities for business leaders to continue to apply the lessons they have learned over the last few years.

    “Where we are today … retail is a completely different industry [than in 2019],” Kohl’s CEO Michelle Gass said Tuesday during Fortune’s Most Powerful Women Summit in California. “So many changes—from living through the pandemic, supply chain challenges, the spikes in demand, the pull back in demand, labor.”

    But the roller coaster ride likely isn’t over yet, as many experts predict the U.S. will enter a recession next year due to the Federal Reserve’s attempts to tamp down soaring inflation with interest rate hikes.

    Gass said Kohl’s is already grappling with recession fears and inflation woes. “We’ve already started feeling it,” she said. “We operate in the more discretionary categories, as opposed to food and gas, and where a lot of budgets are being constrained. And so, as we see this unfolding, we are quickly adapting.” 

    While Gass acknowledged that her company is holding off on stocking up on inventory, Kohl’s, like many companies today, is using the current circumstances as a “catalyst for change,” she explained. “Oftentimes the harder things are around really structurally changing your cost, structurally changing the way you’re working,” she said. 

    The retailer is also utilizing customer data more than ever before. Gass noted that Khol’s serves 65 million customers across the country, and the chain has over 30 million subscribers in its loyalty program.

    “For someone passionate about data—because it’s a treasure chest—we’re able to tailor and actually do different offers for Julie and Alan, based on what’s going to get them motivated to come and shop,” Gass said. “That, especially in this environment, is extremely powerful to make sure that you’re giving offers to people who need it, versus not.”

    But utilizing data comes with challenges as well, said Julie Sweet, chair and CEO of Accenture. “This is the area where I think everyone intuitively understands that data is important. And I’ve not yet found a company that has actually solved the problems of data,” she said. 

    Sweet’s team is spending time talking to CEOs today around five key forces of change, the first being the “total enterprise reinvention through technology.” Sweet said most businesses have talked about digitization, but reinvention goes a step further and asks companies to systematically overhaul everything that they do. “That has profound implications for how you invest and think about the future,” Sweet said. 

    Talent is the second key—how companies access talent, create opportunities to unlock talent potential and build pathways to future growth. 

    Sustainability, broadly, is third. It includes aspects like energy transformation, but it’s also about diversity and what companies are doing within the communities they operate and how that all translates to the bottom line, Sweet said.  

    The metaverse is the fourth key force of change, an area where Accenture in particular has made a  lot of investment, building its own metaverse for onboarding and employee training. “I will say lots of debate around this, but there isn’t a company or industry that doesn’t need to be thinking about what is it going to be like to go in and out of the virtual and physical world and how will that profoundly change everything, from what we buy, how we buy it, to how we work,” Sweet said. 

    Finally, the last aspect is the “ongoing technology revolution,” Sweet said. Companies are already investing in this today, but Sweet said leaders need to be able to think ahead and really understand how those trends might affect the business. “It’s also an important part of what CEOs and their leadership teams have to do today.”

    Sign up for the Fortune Features email list so you don’t miss our biggest features, exclusive interviews, and investigations.

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    Megan Leonhardt

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  • How to Position Your Brand to Win in an Fast-Changing Market

    How to Position Your Brand to Win in an Fast-Changing Market

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    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    The market we work in today is rapidly changing across all industries. We’re working against ultra-high inflation rates, an ongoing labor shortage and a nationwide supply chain crisis that backlogged operations for many companies. During turbulent times, strong and strategic leadership is a must to keep an organization afloat. To move in a forward-thinking direction during these moments of change, leaders must analyze their competitors, identify market disruptors and research industry trends to stay ahead of the curve.

    Over the last 20 years as the Founder and CEO of a national multi-million-dollar franchise in the healthcare industry, I have witnessed periods of extensive change in the market landscape. More notably, because of Covid, we’re currently seeing a new wave of market shifts that companies must actively react and respond to. In this article, I will provide examples and a path forward to ensure your organization is set up for success amid a rapidly changing market.

    Related: How to Adapt in a Rapidly Changing Economy

    How to position your brand to win

    As markets evolve, determining the trends influencing your specific industry is the first step you should take to ensure your company is positioned to win. Based on these trends, analyze where the industry is heading and what this will mean for your organization’s future. We’re seeing businesses embrace technology like never before, digitize their processes and align with strategic partners to expand reach. These shifts often issue a new season of growth for companies that comply with consumer demands and align with the direction of where their specific industry is heading. Whatever the reason, to get ahead, be aware of these trends and create an action plan.

    Another factor to consider is the danger of the status quo. No matter how large and successful your organization may be, it’s not immune to a changing environment. Adapting and adjusting to industry changes is a key indicator of a company’s future success. A cautionary tale of a business that failed to keep up with a changing market is Netflix‘s displacement of the Blockbuster franchise. Entertainment moved away from in-store disc rentals to at-home streaming, yet Blockbuster did not promptly read and respond to those changes until it was too late.

    Watch the competition and recognize disruptors

    While monitoring industry changes, keep a keen eye on the competition. Analyze how your competitors respond to real-time market shifts and how your response differs. Another essential key is recognizing disruptors. Disruptors are new companies or technologies that innovate outside your industry and significantly impact the market.

    An organization that is notorious for disrupting the market is Amazon. We may think of Amazon as the big disruptor of ecommerce. However, when you take a closer look, Amazon is a highly sophisticated technology platform that adapts across industries — including healthcare, which is my specific industry. CVS is another excellent example. While it may be a retail giant, CVS also offers an array of integrated healthcare services via acquisitions and major corporate partnerships. After key trends have been determined, and you have your pulse on the competition and the industry’s many disruptors, your organization will need to develop a road map to prepare for what’s next.

    Related: Why Amazon and Jeff Bezos Are So Successful at Disruption

    Embrace a shared vision

    Another crucial piece of the puzzle is ensuring all your key stakeholders are on board with your strategic plan for the company’s future. The goal should be to adapt to market changes while staying true to your brand values and mission. This means having tough but necessary conversations with your network to establish alignment.

    My organization is currently implementing our strategic plan to adapt to advancements in the healthcare industry. Our brand’s purpose is to enrich the lives of our clients and families, and our brand vision is to expand our reach and the accessibility of home care. As a national franchise brand, we must work with our network of franchisees to ensure we share the same vision for the future. When we initially presented the plan, it was met with hesitation from some franchisees. We continue to hold one-on-one meetings and host network-wide town hall meetings to ensure our franchisees’ voices and ideas are heard.

    Despite the adversity and opposition from some players, I have remained steadfast in our vision to uphold the best interests of our network with whatever means necessary to ensure consistency in delivery and quality, expand the addressable market so more seniors can access quality care and deliver on the opportunities ahead. I have received feedback from franchisees that change takes time to process and operationalize. Ultimately, many recognized the value in refocusing efforts to align with the external forces impacting our industry. Many also recognized the opportunity this change presents. Our strategic plan will inevitably drive revenue growth and profitability for the entire network.

    A natural reaction to change is opposition. However, the saying goes, “there is strength in numbers,” which stands true as you think about your company’s future. There is the strength behind a network coming together to create change. But a clear path must be put in place so all partners and all parties involved can launch that shared vision to fruition.

    Related: How to Maintain Profitability in a Changing Market

    The state of the market and knowing exactly where your industry is heading will often be volatile. However, keeping a close eye on market trends, disruptors and competitors and positioning your brand to remain in front of these changes will set your brand apart. Adhere to your organization’s brand mission during moments of change, and focus on areas of improvement to meet current and future industry demands. Be willing to be the leader who will take your organization where it needs to go, even if it may not be where stakeholders desire to go in the short term.

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    Shelly Sun

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