Surviving tough times: The power of re-invention
True Prosperity involves a happy and enjoyable journey through life. Strive to make your gratitude larger than your success” (George Faddoul).
It is a fact that in life, things appear to come and go just like the seasons. And, in life, there are the good times and there are the not-so good times. That is just the way life is. It should therefore be normal to expect that every business will at one time or the other experience some tough and difficult times. Sometimes this results from internal environmental factors, which are largely controllable. At other times the challenges are due to external environmental factors, which are simply beyond anyone’s control.
It is these external factors that must be adapted to, in order for the business to move forward. The only way to deal with the external business challenges is to develop realistic and effective adaptation techniques. That is the real assignment of every would-be successful business owner and/or manager. And, no matter the level of business management skills, knowledge and experience that may be available, practical and proactive interventions are always required. These are required to mitigate business failure risks, while also repositioning the business through innovativeness and creativity. The goal is to benefit from the opportunities created by the challenges.
Being able to adapt to tough external environmental factors through business innovativeness and creativity, as well as benefiting from the solutions offered are primarily what entrepreneurship is all about. The truth is that many times it is when there is an economic or business downturn that the solutions provided by the entrepreneur are appreciated the most. There are several well known companies and brands today that developed and grew during tough economic downturns.
Companies such as Southwest Airlines Co., JetBlue Airlines Corp., Ryanair Holdings, Charles Schwab Corp, Home Depot Inc., CNN, People magazine, and cosmetic companies such as Estee Lauder Cos. and Revlon Inc. are all good examples of brands that became better established and recognisable through their growth and performance during times of economic recessions and business downturn. What each of them did was to reinvent, repackage and rebrand themselves.
It is for this reason that most successful entrepreneurs have generally targeted downturns to present their ideas. This is because such times are also best to offer new, exciting and value-laden products and services, as realistic alternatives to what exists or existed in the market. Tough times always create new needs. At the same time, they create an abundance of underutilised resources and opportunities that are available at a relatively low cost. For example, it’s not difficult to imagine that auto repair shops generally thrive during downturns, coinciding with the time that new car sales drop.
What most companies do universally during a downturn is to retrench staff and shed assets in order to save costs. While this may be okay in the short run, there are also the risks of losing valuable resources, alienating key customers and eroding long term capabilities. This could result in loss of competitiveness and sustainability over time. A more realistic and sustainable approach is to adopt practical business reinvention strategies, which involve complete business diagnosis and retooling. Facilitating this process is one of the most important aspects of business coaching.
Business coaching offers the most beneficial partnership to business owners and managers. There is no better time to enjoy such benefits than during difficult times, when “going it alone” just would not work anymore for the business owner/manager. In this regard, bringing in new ideas and a fresh outlook provide essential benefits, and represent the hallmark of a good coaching engagement.
This is because having an “outsider view”, especially by an experienced business coach leads to the uncovering of untapped potentials and unexploited resources within the business, which are usually overlooked. This often becomes evident when proper business diagnostic and reinvention processes are undertaken in the course of a business coaching intervention. The coaching process also involves the provision of cost-effective, practical and easily adaptable business building tools to reposition a business in the market place.
Since adapting the right knowledge is what grows and differentiates businesses, the provision of these tools, which are customised to a particular business need have the potentials to also multiply business profits. These are some of the business reinvention strategies that are needful during tough times. That is in fact the best time to reinvent yourself and your business for recovery and relaunch. The process of reinvention is actually a four stage approach.
The first stage and approach is to refocus your business. This involves looking inwards in order to unearth hidden treasure within your business – your business uniqueness (or business intelligence). The second stage is to reshape your business. This involves reorganising your business operations to fit specific priority areas.
The third stage is to reposition your business. This involves undertaking wholesale business systemisation, thus moving your business from being centred around you, to being systems-driven. The final stage is to rebrand your business. This involves the creaming of your niche market to build a loyal brand from your top 20% customers. You can read more about the transformational power of coaching at www.ceedcoaching.com.
Emmanuel Imevbere