For nearly half a century, crisis management has been a popular practice within organizations with several contingencies in place in case of downtimes, disruptions, and market fluctuations. However, most modern organizations overlook the one thing that usually leads to internal issues – repetitive mistakes. And one of the most repetitive mistakes organizations make is doing the same thing over and over again, creating a loop of failures that not only waste time but also waste valuable resources.
The COVID-19 pandemic has offered hundreds of businesses a fresh start to get things right and keep up with the fast pace of the new normal to stay in the competition. To do that, you need to understand why doing the same things over and over again could be bad for your business in the modern age, which is what we’ll be talking about in this post.
3 Things Most Organizations Do Over and Over Again
1. Kill Innovation to Maintain Traditional Practices or Businesses
Over the last few decades, we have seen the demise of so many top organizations simply due to stubbornness or ego. Consider Nokia for example. The cellphone manufacturing giant was the industry leader for over a decade until it was blown out of the water by innovative companies like Apple and Samsung launching operating systems and features that made Nokia’s obsolete. Similarly, Kodak invented the digital camera but didn’t introduce it to the market for nearly 25 years due to the success of their film technology, thereby, purposely halting innovation and cannibalizing their own business.
2. Offer Outdated Customer Service Polices
Customer-centricity is the trending buzzword in the business industry these days. The math is simple – keep your customers happy, and they’ll keep your pockets filled. Give them bad customer service, and they’ll find an alternative by simply making a Google or Facebook search. By compromising your customer experience and sticking to outdated, brick practices, you’re continuously threatening your business continuity.
3. Stay in their Comfort Zone
Not too long ago, most startups and small businesses wanted to find their little corner in the market and stick to a niche. However, the modern landscape demands businesses keep growing and expanding into new markets to gain new customers and add more revenue streams. Most startups fall because they constantly rely on a single source of revenue generation instead of penetrating under-serving sectors and building valuable relationships.
How Making Small, Timely Conscious Changes Can Make a Huge Impact
Humans are creatures of habit who continue to do the same thing as long as it is easy and efficient instead of challenging preconceived notions of how it should be done. However, times are changing, and businesses with this mindset might live to see the next year if they don’t change with the times. If your business is no longer moving forward with doing things the same way, here’s how you can slowly transform your mindset and practices with it:
1. Endure, Persist, Persevere
During the pandemic, we’ve seen that the best leaders are not just those who were able to scale and grow their business in 2020/2021 but also those who were willing to stay the course and ensure continuity. One of the biggest problems is that most businesses want instant change, which isn’t possible even if you have the required technologies and personnel on board. Change takes time; therefore, you need to be patient and keep learning new skills or concepts to change your perception of reality. This way, you drift away from making the same moves or decisions over and over again.
2. Maintain Competence
Admitting that change is necessary for growth is the easy part. Working on how to change requires conscious competence, which is a fancy term for keeping up with the trending concepts, technologies, practices, and skills in the marketplace. Adopting these changes isn’t a switch that just needs to be turned on. There is a transition period every team and employee must go through before they can adopt new tools and practices. Moreover, you need to ensure that you keep an open mind throughout to ensure that you’re able to stay the course. Nokia eventually got back on track after it finally embraced Android technology.
3. Find the Balance Between Consistency and Variance
Undoubtedly, you’ll require creativity to foster change within your organization. However, this doesn’t mean you disrupt your entire workflow to implement those changes. What you need is the right balance between consistency and variance. You neither want to allow too much leeway nor want to discourage innovating thinking or risk-taking. Having a systematic business plan is great for sustenance, but you have to leave your organizational bubble to get where you need to be before you can sustain the changes.
Wrapping it up
To sum up, modern organizations need to establish and maintain change management programs to ensure they keep evolving and drift away from repeated practices. Every industry sector is changing with the influx of new technologies, practices, compliances, and consumer behavior. If you want to truly advance, you need to foster a fluid and agile workplace culture in which employees and teams are always in transition, learning and adapting to keep up with the pace.
For more information related to technology and trending business practices, visit Percento Technologies today. We specialize in working with small businesses to help develop IT and web solutions that can support your technology initiatives.
by Bobby J Davidson
I love our companies and we love what we do. For more information on the Davidson Family of Companies, visit www.bobbydavidson.com/about. Sign up for my Newsletter at the bottom of this page.