Business Strategies
I’ve had a roughly two-week hiatus from this blog to think about my personal business direction and to gather ideas for this site. This was a rejuvenation period as I noticed I was repeating topics here. In my business, I was doing the same thing repeatedly, getting the same poor results. Ben Franklin’s quote comes to mind, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.”
As I was going through this process, finding new directions and ideas to pursue, I realized how easy it is for me to do this compared to a mid-size or large corporation. In larger institutions when a change is warranted, the need to acquire approval from decision-makers can hamper proper response-time to address market demands. This additional cost and inability to quickly respond can mean doom for many organizations.
On the other hand, assuming we take a long-term perspective, continuously changing plans, products, services, and responses-to-customers may mean thrashing of resources that could be elsewhere with better results. Taking a longer time to think about and plan for changes may mean lower immediate payoffs, but longer-lasting companies and strategies.
As I think about the tradeoffs of each type of organization, I realize neither system is necessarily right or wrong. In fact, so long as an organization is effective in achieving its goals, whether they are short or long-term, whether an organization wants to constantly change direction or not, everything else becomes rhetoric fodder for theoreticians and the like. Results are what matter so long as those results are what were planned.
If neither system is necessarily right or wrong, why do so many people complain about one or the other? This is purely a personality mismatch. When searching for your next adventure, employer, or project, what becomes important is realizing what is your personality, long-term goals, and where does your comfort level sit with respect to ever-changing or stable environments. Once you know this, you simply have to search for a healthy and financially stable organization that fits your profile. All else will fall into place and you’ll be as successful as you work toward your dreams and goals.
So, what are you searching for? Where do you fit in? Do you feel comfortable in the chaos of ever-changing environments, or the long-planning and process focused organizations?
What Do You Think?
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Photo Credit: Mykl Roventine