WHEN? The 5th W in the 5W1H theory
Timing is everything. Often people ask, why should I change when everything is going well? The converse as Monica Seles said – Why should there be a victim for change? In business parlance, why should I get into the pits to rise? The difference between organizations that continue to grow year on year to organizations that plateau or stagnate or fluctuate at a certain stage is answered by the WHEN!!
The glass ceiling that seems to hover around these organizations is their inability to see the need for change, the necessity to change and hence the inertia to change. In that inertia, lies their fallibility. The other organization that stagnates are the ones that change too often. They see opportunities everywhere and go after each one of them and lose out on the collective expertise built in a particular domain/ geography and not exploiting and extracting the best out of that. You are known as great in patches and pockets across customer segments and geographies without really becoming the leader.
Whether it be technology or innovation or invention or process improvement, the propensity as an organization to transform, adopt and adapt without letting go of the core becomes the cog that determines growth. Pride, inflated ego on number of customers, number of products in your stable, geographical presence, verticals addressed lead to a false sense of growth possibility. The courage to retract on an initiative through objective assessment is another crucial quality that the senior management needs to imbibe. Business isn’t gambling where you always “hope” for luck to favour you. It’s about taking well analysed positions that you would do while investing your personal money in the stock markets.
So, WHEN to do it? Market research would provide you with enough inputs on the trends, market demands and market preferences. Are we acting on it? Let’s take the example of Digital transformation where a company name has become a verb for referring to new age organizations which have transformed the way business is done. “Zero Car owned” taxi services, “zero property owned” hotel chains, personalised logistics leading to cloud kitchens, have dramatized the digital economy. Convenience, cost, and differentiated value continue to be the three pillars of any disruption. Against the same parameters, where does your business stand? If you aren’t providing any of these three, you have a problem. The time for change is NOW. Companies must continuously improve, innovate, and differentiate to thrive in this era of digital revolution.
Yes, Digital transformation cannot just be wished for, and it does take time, but we can do a lot of things NOW. What am I doing as an organization that differentiates me from the rest of my competition? Have I analysed my customers and had a look into my most profitable customers, my loss-making customers / products, my seasonal customers / products, my consistent customers / products? Have I thought about letting go of the loss-making customers / products? Have I thought about improved traction, relationship, marketing for my profit-making customers / products?
What am I doing as an organization that delivers greater comfort and convenience to my customers? What am I doing to my products that enhances the convenience or value? Am I providing the best cost to my customer? Cost and price aren’t the same and simply put cost is in relation to what I get out of it. Hence do not equate cost and price to be the same.
Life is lived in the moments. Organizations thrive when they start acting the moment the question “When should I do it” comes into their mind. For that question is a culmination of their innate knowledge, market reality, clairvoyance that differentiates the entrepreneur to a professional. “When” is about the directional call and not an efficiency call that is the domain of the managers.
Remember these lines – “If not you, then who? If not now, then, WHEN?”
