When running your own businesses it is usual to have standard procedures and set ways of doing things. It’s called efficiency. After all, it’s the logical way to do things and we’ve always done it that way and it works.
 
The problem is that it’s easy to form habits and become very set in our ways. We resist change and so do our staff. The business plods along okay as everything steadily changes around it. Then day by day business gets a bit tougher. Customers become more demanding, competition increases and it becomes harder to make ends meet. We all know what happens next even if it does take a few years until the inevitable end. The fact is it doesn’t need to be like that.
 
As a Manager/Leader the best way to ensure continuing business success and job security is to embrace change. It doesn’t matter how big or how small a company is. Without change the tendency is to become sluggish, even bureaucratic. It’s easy to lose the sharp edge and become slow at making decisions and taking action. There is the tendency to avoid any situation that might hold even the slightest element of risk.
 
My advice is to keep your mind open to change all the time. Welcome it. It’s only by examining and re-examining your opinions and ideas that you can progress.
 
Become a champion of change rather than a boiled frog!
 
If you can remember back to your high school days you may recall the classic’ biology experiment using a frog. It goes something like this. You put a frog in a pot of cold water and then gradually turn the heat up. What happens? The frog does nothing! It just sits there without jumping out as the water heats up. The frog will ultimately be boiled to death.
 
That is similar to what happens in many small businesses. They get hurt in the market place before they wake up. It’s the "she’ll be right" attitude.
 
In my opinion it is better to become a champion of change rather than a victim of change (a boiled frog!). I agree that change is difficult for all of us and that’s why we all have a natural tendency to resist it. Yet like it or not we are living in one of the most exciting periods civilization has ever known. It is a period of astounding and radical change. An era of unprecedented rapid, accelerating change... the "Golden Age Of Opportunity"... "The Greatest Entrepreneurial Boom In History."
 
The thing about change is that you really have no choice. Resist it and become a victim or you can decide to become a champion of change and capitalize on it.
 
To become a champion of change you need to break out of your comfort zone and try new things before you are forced to.
 

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© Noel Peebles - author of "Sell Your Business The Easy Way"