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WHO ARE YOU IN THE MAZE PART 3

Guest post by: Steven Raelly

Article Overview: KEYS TO BUSINESS SUCCESS

WHO ARE YOU IN THE MAZE PART 3

In the previous article we looked at strategies for keeping your cheese:

1. Regular and consistent customer visits/meetings.

2. Regular customer satisfaction surveys- this helps you know areas you need to improve on from your customers perspective

3. Customer appreciation promotions- freebies, discounts, special rates, etc

4. Regular market surveys- continuously seek to improve in context of the market, gauge your current market share against competitors and forecast your potential market share using business growth strategies.

5. Adapt to changing market demands

6. Listen to what your customers need- offer needs based services.

7. Be honest with the customer- customers hate being lied to.

8. Remember at all times that you are ALIVE because of the cheese.

We also concluded that it is about time as managers and entrepreneurs we took the initiative and stopped asking WHO MOVED MY CHEESE? and worked on keeping and growing our cheese.

Lets recap: A parable is told of four characters that lived in a maze, two rats and two small people namely Scurry, Sniffers, Hem and Haw, respectively. It so happened that at a particular time of the day these characters would get out of their comfort zones and move to zone C to eat some cheese. This routine went on for many days, weeks, months, and years; till one day the cheese moved to a different location in the maze. Well for the rats this change did not make much of an impact because, for Scurry he scratched around till he found the cheese, for sniffers he sniffed around till he found the cheese; but for hem and haw well it was business as usual, went to zone C walked around in circles and went back home. (Adopted: Who Moved My Cheese; Dr. Spencer Johnson)

In this article we take a closer look at the effects of the small people (hesitant changers) mentality on business performance. Have you ever worked in an organization where everything is done the same way all the time, and it has been done that way for what seems like forever.

Picture this with me through your minds eye. You walk into an organization where the accounting system is still manual, the boss still expects the secretary to type his letters and reports for him on an old typewriter. And when you ask whether they have an email address, the response is, well we tried to have one but we did not know how to use it. We comfortable using the more conventional methods (the post).

I know this is a simple example but let me bring it closer home. The concept of hesitant change does not only apply to technology. How often is it that the market is signaling to you to shape up or shape out. Let me give you clearer picture, in the Zambian Internet provision market we have about five (5) Internet service providers. The market is highly competitive and dynamic. Lets assume you work for Internet service provider X who owns fiber optic lines and all the other Internet service providers buy their fiber off you, that means that you actual not only compete with them but you also offer a complementary service. Well as the days go on the market begins to change with two of your competitors investing into their own fiber lines, but you remain satisfied, and watching your clientèle migrate to a more expensive Internet provider, but you are satisfied for you believe you are a monopoly. The irony of this thought process is that one day you will wake up and realize that you are slowly been kicked out of the market. Think for a moment, when was the last time you checked the industry you are in for new entrants, new trends, new market intelligence, etc. When was the last time you checked to see how you are fairing against your competition. Change is inevitable but it is also strategic.

Lets not get used to the way things have always been done, because scary as it seems there are many companies that have closed because they failed to see the market signals for change. The business world is all about keeping up to date with what is happening around you. You may ask what are the effects of hesitant changers on business performance:-

1.loss of market share

2. decline in profitability

3. decline in client base

4. market booting (being forced out of the market, as customers look at other innovative providers)

It may seem as though the story sounds bad, the subject of organizational change is a major subject and in the articles to follow we will focus on change management strategies that can catapult your business to success.

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Article Tags: keys to business success



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