Whether your business is highly profitable, struggling or somewhere in between, having a plan or process on how you are going to improve and innovate is crucial to its long term survival or the value you can sell or pass on to the next owners.
Right now, it is more important than ever to change the way we operate not only to ensure immediate survival but long term viability. The rate of change in business is accelerating and those businesses which do not anticipate and prepare for industry change will not survive long term.
Why does that matter to you?
Because the profitability and value of your business will be affected and most business owners rely on the value of their business to retire or pass to the next generation.
Employees may find themselves in a disappearing trade or industry or one that no longer exists in Australia.
We all need to prepare for the industry changes or risk losing that which you have worked hard to build.
The overall (macro) economic numbers do not tell the true story of what is happening in SMEs across Australia.
Years of difficult trading is beginning to impact not only the marginal businesses but also the ones which have been around for a long time. We have seen a number of businesses either close or under duress that have been around for 10 or more years.
Take a hard look at your industry sector and what changes are happening now and in the future:
- How are you responding to the changes coming?
- How are we staying relevant to our current and future customers?
- Do you have the right people in your business for the changes coming?
- Do you have the right business, legal and financial structure for current and future requirements?
- What are the immediate priorities for change within your business?
- How do we implement change in a tight economic environment? How do we ensure we are progressing to our long term goals?
- How do we ensure business and personal goals are being addressed?
While many of us in business are focused on day-to-day issues, long term success comes from incremental improvements over a long period of time.
