Insight into your current state creates the platform for sustainable growth.
What changes need to be made to create sustainable growth in your business?
Not quite sure? You are not alone, most business struggle to ‘pin-point’ the areas of their business that need change.
Identifying and prioritizing the focus areas that need change is tough work.
The process to implement change in most businesses, is further complicated by the need to communicate and receive buy-in from all impacted stake holders.
How do we move our businesses into a continuous transformation state?
How do we move into a mode of operation, that embraces the possibility of continuous improvement?
As business owners where do we start? And where is the biggest bang for buck and return on investment?
We all know that the right changes to the right sections of our business can be an awesome profit generating exercise. However, most businesses want some form of guarantee… if I do this — will it do that ?
The only guarantee that a business has, is that without change, things remain the same.
Is it our sales and marketing strategy? Is it our operational efficiencies? Is our cash flow stopping us from making the changes we believe could revolutionize the way we do business? Are our systems complicated and dis-jointed? Are we struggling to make meaningful sense of our data?
Or in the worst case, do we think there is no use looking to change because it just can’t happen quick enough?
Obtaining clarity through insight into our current state, will help our businesses prioritize and plan for the changes to be made. Having a substantiated plan that is based on facts, helps drive change with-in the parameters of existing financial, operational and capability constraints.
If we could right-size the changes we need, our businesses would move into a mode of continuous innovation and improvement — knowing where to start and where to go next — just like a map.
What if your business recognized the key areas to target and had insight into how to prioritize the changes to be made?
Just imaging, if the investments you made into your business had a higher degree of success and created lasting sustainable growth, literally transforming your existing potential — the outcomes would be game changing.
Your business could target the areas that had the greatest chance of improving the current state and move with a high degree of certainty into the market you serve.
Your business would have a greater understanding of what to invest in through simplified and quantifiable insight.
You would have confidence in your strategy and understand that change management is a big part of who your business is.
Your business communications would move in a way that embraces transformation, because your story would involve change and improvement at its core.
You could improve your ability to negotiate with all service providers, because your defined and structured decision-making capabilities are anchored to your insights.
It is the starting that stops most businesses.
This is the key reason why an assessment and inquiry is used to provide insight into the current state of a business. There is no other place to start from. All diligent processes should start with some form of proof gathering exercise.
Think of it this way, when you go to the doctors, the first thing they are likely to ask you is, what’s wrong? They listen first in most cases, and then check the key vital signs they have been trained to observe. If something is wrong, they will make recommendations. If they need further insight, they may direct you to undergo tests to obtain more data, in order to make recommendations.
The approach to a business assessment follows a similar methodical process. An assessment is the starting point to move from — it is the ground zero.
In most cases where change is needed, a diligent assessment process should should establish the foundation where recommended next steps are constructed from. If an investment in time and resources are required, some form of insight needs to be used to determine if they are viable and beneficial to growth.
A holistic approach to strategy and change management can be a North Star for businesses.
Beware of the known knowns
The dangers of the bespoke and fragmented approach to an assessment will often lead to compartmental investments in services and solutions. A bespoke approach to sales, marketing, technology, financial and operational initiatives, has likely contributed to the disparate silos of information repositories that exist in most business.
Tapping the disparate information that exists in businesses can provide game changing insight and uncover real value — especially when ‘bench-marked’ against known-knowns.
Where is your data and what story does it reveal about your industry, market sector and customers?
All global markets will forever need change agents that can help businesses uncover potential by delivering value derived from fact-based insights. As businesses owners we need to collectively avoid the ill informed dangers of self diagnosis — the “maybe this will work” approach, this is a major contributor to our current state. We have to move in a mode that implements holistic transformation and embrace strategic plans that deliver measurable sustainable growth
“The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.” -Aristotle
The whole is the BUSINESS - people,customers, processes and systems make up the some of it’s parts. Crown your business King, and you will have made one of the biggest changes that all great businesses make.
If this sort of business change interests you, then Download this simple info-graphic that outlines the 5 key areas of business insight required for today’s businesses.
