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As 2019 comes to a close and 2020 begins, it’s a good time to reflect on your year, take a look at how your business performed and plan for changes to make in the new year.
Some business changes are a simple, organic response to success: a growing start up needs to change it’s structure to ensure new staff are managed efficiently and information and responsibility flow effectively up a pyramid to the executive level. The changes you make could be on the individual level, creating a new position for an employee who’s outperformed your expectations and needs room to grow before they move on. They could be huge and structural, totally reorganizing your business collaboration as a matter of survival.
Today we’re taking a look at the issues involved in making changes to your business and building your success rather than undermining yourself.
Your Core Values
The most important thing you can do is make sure any change helps you refocus on the core values of your business. Change for change’s sake dilutes your identity, makes it harder for customers to understand your brand and harder for your marketing to communicate the virtues of your company.
Look to the Lego business strategy as inspiration: while they made big changes to their corporate structure, and shed a lot of staff doing it, it was all in service of returning to the values at the heart of the brand and placing more Lego in the hands of more children.
Before you commit to a big change, reflect on where your business started, what its core is, and what you do that actually persuades customers and clients to part with their money. If your plans don’t make it easier for that simple process to happen, then it not be the right idea.
Communication
Any big overhaul of your company needs to be well communicated, both to your employees and to the watching world. It’s difficult news to give, as to some employees it’s an interesting update on the structure of your business that could lead to new opportunities for them, while to others it is notification that their job could be at risk.
A strong HR department is useful asset when you have news like this to communicate, able to coordinate so everyone learns it at the same time and in the most sensitive and appropriate way possible.
When you’re making changes that could become apparent to customers, or even make the papers it may be worth trying to control the story by releasing it first. An online press release emphasizing that this will allow your business to work more efficiently rather than being desperate cost saving can help to preserve the confidence of customers and investors.
Implement Change In Business
With the proper communication channels established, it’s time to implement changes in your business. Everyone should have a strong understanding of their roles and responsibilities. As you go live with the new changes, track and monitor changes to the business. Of course, there will be several events or outcomes that you may have not planned for. By tracking your changes and people, you can work with everyone in specific roles to evaluate the changes and react accordingly.
Scale Your Changing Business
With a slow and steady start, you can start to scale changing your business. Follow the change management plan to roll out the new implementation across the company. Of course, this may require additional resources or reporting to ensure your new systems are working for everyone in the company. While you might be met with resistance and negative feedback, stick to the plan to ensure the new changes are working at scale with the business.
In the year ahead, make changes in your business by focusing on culture, communication and implementation. Throughout the process, you should stick to a plan and seek out critical feedback to make improvements along the way. While making changes in business will cause several short term issues, they can dramatically change your profitability in the long term.