However clear and strong your vision as a founder, however good your product and loyal your audience, there will always be times when you need to make changes to your business. It’s not always easy to recognise these times, let alone identify the right changes to make and put them into practice, so we’re taking a look at this subject today to help you make decisions you know you can rely on.
Times to Change
There are two key factors in identifying when it’s time to make changes to your business: the market and your own life.
The personal point is especially relevant to small businesses. When you’re steering a small ship alone, then its direction has got to reflect your priorities and ambitions. It’s well worth checking in regularly to make sure the direction of your business is still aligned with what you want from it. Whether it’s major lifetime milestones like having children or a slow drift over time, if you don’t keep your business strategy in line with your values and priorities, running it will become exactly the same kind of impersonal chore that working for someone else’s business can be.
The other factor – the market conditions – is well beyond your control. The market you’re trading in is made up of your customers, your rivals, and the larger economic conditions that influence their behaviour. Any kind of change – from a new competitor arriving in town to a raise in mortgage rates – can have a huge effect on your customers and their willingness to spend money on you, and it’s important to recognise when these shifts happen – or even predict when they’re coming – so you can respond.
How to Change
If you’re contemplating changes to your business – structural, strategic, or procedural, it can be worth getting some help. If you’re looking for specific advice, like business growth consulting or leadership and communications mentoring, the sector has plenty to offer, and in situations like this consultants can deliver a real service for you. It’s possible to be close to a problem to see a clear solution, especially when it’s about a matter as personal as a business you’ve built yourself. When it could mean giving up on long held dreams or even making valued colleagues redundant it can be difficult to see the right thing to do.
Working with consultants means you have a trusted external perspective to rely on, as well as a deep well of knowledge of the different tactical options available to you, helping you make the right change in the right way to see your business safe into the future.
