We've been talking a lot recently about saying Yes, and how important it is. We definitely stand by that - every business must be open to opportunities. But one important thing to remember, that's pretty easily forgotten, is that every single company in the world once started with a founder or a founding team saying a simple Yes to an idea. Ideas are powerful things - they can be the most powerful force imaginable, in fact. That's because ideas are what cause the world to shift, change and transform. The beauty of business though, is that ideas always evolve. The idea you start with isn't necessarily the idea you finish with.
If you look back at some of the most successful businesses in the past 100 years, they've been companies who have been ready to adapt at any given time, whether that means adapting to a new market, a new technology or a new competitive landscape. Take Apple - they started out as a business selling simple, hand made home computers. Today, the bulk of their money comes from manufacturing the most successful phone ever built. That's an enormous change, and it's one that every business should be committed to facing at some point in their existence.
For many companies, the obstacles to this kind of evolution are often obstacles of scale and preparation. It's difficult to know if your business has the resources, the talent or the financial runway to support a shift in what you do and how you do it. Knowing that you can support a strong move in a new direction is the first step to ensuring you have a future as a company. So how do you get there?
You really have to establish a firm grasp on your business' health. You've got to be able to track and manage as much of the data and the information around your staff, your productivity, your cash flow and your projections. To be in the perfect position to face change and transformation, you need to work through every aspect and element of what your company does, measure it, and build a reliable dashboard that can provide you with the right knowledge at the right time.
You can call it a health check, if you like, a health check that will tell you how your business is feeling, and what it needs to do to stay in shape. This is something we've done time and time again for our clients, and we're always excited about the new perspective it can give business owners. They often spend so much of their time focusing on running their business in the day to day work and activities, that they lose sight of where it's all going and how they're tracking.
When we can show that to them, when we can help them to understand their company from top to bottom, they become empowered. They're in the perfect position to start saying Yes. Yes to growth, to expansion, to evolving. Yes to embracing new ideas. That's the way our clients build innovative services and products and build the future of their companies!
We’ve recently partnered with Spotcap Australia in a competition that encourages business owners to think about times when they’ve said Yes, and talk to us about the impact that’s had on their companies.
(Photo credit: WOCinTech)
