The following is an article “Taking Disruptive Change Head-On” by Marc Primo.
Along with the advent of the Internet came big challenges for companies in coping with evolving technologies and strategies. Business trends continue to develop at a rapid pace and part of the game is to face these disruptions head-on and to assume the lead over the competition. Having a clear foresight on impending disruptive changes may be an advantage, but knowing your employees’ collective mindset and how your business works is what really matters.
Say you have the best managers and specialists you can find who know your products inside out but find it difficult to deal with staff changes and process shifts. Your business will find it hard to move forward if they can’t come up with the right adjustments. Aside from having ample knowledge about your brand and product, they should also have the capacity to hire the right people for the job and train employees to roll with redefined functions and systems. Most managers merely assume that certain jobs and processes should remain the same regardless of new trends and fail to see the need to address these disruptive changes. What you’ll need is to organize a set of values that will guide your staff in making decisions on how to utilize resources and develop processes to make your business work.
Here’s why resources, processes, and values can help you understand what capabilities your business possess, and how you can take on disruptions head-on:
Resources. What your business possesses as tangible and intangible assets defines what it can do for your target market. These include your branding, verbal information, and even relationships with your stakeholders. Accounting all your resources can help you identify your business’s capabilities so you can handle disruptive changes. Minimizing your attrition rate allows you to retain the best employees for the job who know your processes and values by principle and practice. Acquiring the latest software and equipment will help you operate your business more smoothly and will only entail minimal costs for upgrades. Placing importance on your resources leverages your business to take on the latest trends while allowing you to smoothly adapt.
Processes. Aside from your technical processes, another factor when embracing change is the way you interact, coordinate, communicate, and carry out decisions to convert your resources into products. These come into play when you do market research and determine where to invest. Non-technical processes also develop to deliver improved results and defining them will help you create formulas that can produce positives as the industry evolves. They establish how things should be done and familiarize your employees with your business goals even if your resources, including personnel, are to be redirected for other functions.
Values. Your corporate values also plays a factor in how your business can embrace change. They serve as the tenets that each employee abide by in almost all aspects of their functions. Whether your employees deal with customers, or review new products and services, or formulate strategies, your corporate values serve as a guide on how to handle disruptive changes. Decisions are rooted on these values and your corporate values promote an organizational culture among your staff so that they can take on new trends while remaining informed on specific goals and objectives.
Your ability to face disruption relies on how cohesive these three factors are. Resources are transformed into clear processes as dictated by your values, which ultimately define your organizational culture. Having these in check creates a business framework designed to withstand disruptive changes and your managers will be better equipped to audit business capabilities and disabilities, so that they can draw out solutions when it matters most.
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