Change or Else

“There are two kinds of companies – those that change and those that disappear.” – Anonymous

It’s probably the understatement of the last two years to say that we live in an uncertain world. The military uses the acronym VUCA – Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, Ambiguity – to describe certain chaotic situations, usually those involving combat. While we fortunately are not in combat situations, VUCA still accurately sums up the world our businesses are operating in.

There is no magic bullet for success in situations like this, and there are no easy buttons either. There are, however, companies who thrive even in the midst of chaos. There are lots of reasons why those companies do well, but they all have a handful of things in common.

For starters, they’re good at change. They didn’t necessarily sit down and figure out how to handle a global pandemic, but they did sit down and think about how they could be better at changing themselves and how they do business. Change becomes cultural. Do you and those around you look for opportunities to make change? When change is forced on you, do you complain about how hard life is and how it’s not fair? Or do you embrace it as an opportunity to be better & differentiate yourselves from the competition?

Also, they don’t fear failure. They aren’t so paralyzed by the possibility of making wrong decisions that they make no decisions at all. That doesn’t mean they are rash, or do things without thinking them through. What it means is that after they take a reasonable amount of time to think it through, they blast ahead at full speed.

Finally, they have a clear vision in their head of what they want to be. That vision gives them a road map to use when they’re having to make decisions rapidly in a constantly changing environment. They aren’t just bouncing from one thing to the next with no direction. They may be faced with numerous obstacles, but they know what they want the end result to look like and they move forward accordingly.

Think about your business. Do you embrace change? Do you make decisions and then go full speed ahead, even when success isn’t guaranteed? Do you really understand what you want your business to be and then stick to that vision? To thrive in a VUCA world, you have to be able to answer “yes” to all of those questions. Think about where you’re coming up short, then get to work.