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Adapt Your Business To Survive And Thrive

With rapidly changing technology, global suply constraints, and shifts in how we live and interact, the world is changing fast. Traditional businesses are having trouble keeping up with the pace.

Today, business owners must embrace change in order to survive and thrive. If you're a business owner, you need to look for ways to innovate and stay relevant. It may be an astute move to change up your product or services. The more you can embrace change, and test and adapt, the better success you'll have.

Evolve or dissolve - businesses must adapt to survive, grow and one day be sold. It’s always hard to sell a business if it’s struggling unless there is a strong upside. Embrace the change and adapt your business model so you have a business fit for tomorrow, and one that will sell when the time is right.

Look at your business model and how you might best operate, exploring ways to improve your business, offering and your productivity while reducing cost - this may change how you operate, and entail tapping into new markets and being more competitive, all leading to a stronger and more profitable business.

1. Be informed - research your industry for trends and shifts. Use real data to validate how big the market is - what’s working? Who are the key competitors, and are they doing a good job? Look at this from several perspectives.

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2. Innovate - look for the opportunities. There may be a need to redesign the business model, or is a market or service/product innovation needed? Look at approaching the issues in different ways to gain greater clarity and insights.

3. Be agile and think long term. Work to create the ideal business model, and the best products and services. Test and monitor your ideas, and make small shifts - these are easier to adjust or back out of.

Ensure your business has an adaptive strategy and a culture that can survive today's challenges, and prepare you for tomorrow. Any initiatives should minimise the loss of staff, skills and fixed capital, as these are often hard to re-appoint or rebuild. Business owners now need to embrace innovation and strategic resilience as a new way of thinking.

“Innovation and effort will help your business adapt to tighter markets, ensuring you have a more valuable and saleable business when it comes time to sell”, says Richard O’Brien director of Business for Sale NZ website nzbizbuysell.co.nz

This is especially relevant for today’s business climate. It is important to not only survive, but also to thrive in a complex, dynamic and turbulent marketplace. A resilient organisation is one that can effectively innovate and perform, not only in the good times, but also in the face of adversity. Rather than being flattened by an inability to change, resilient organisations often bounce back even stronger after having been stressed.

As Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution states, “organisms equipped with characteristics best suited to their environment are most likely to survive”. This also applies to businesses.

Have a clear focus around purpose and goals, with flexibility and openness to new approaches, and to new roles and ways of getting work done. Foster a climate of learning and creativity, effective communication and a proactive approach to finding opportunities to improve.

If you want to have a highly successful business that one day you can sell, you must adapt, stay committed and retain a strong focus with your hand firmly on the business helm.

© Scoop Media

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