Filed under: Business | Tags: change managment, Marketing Profs Daily Fix Blog
How To Manage Changes
It is vexing, despite the fact that change constantly takes place it can still throw us off-kilter. It seems particularly evident now with constant changes in the economy, with prices, at our jobs… Not to mention a major shift in our government. Most business books that refer to change management teach you how to bring about change, not how to cope with change put upon you. So what can we do to not let change get the best of us?
Change: The Facts
NEVER: Change is never going to stop. In fact, they say the only constant in life is change. We need to get used to it, adapt, and learn to leverage it.
SOMETIMES: While you can’t always control change, you can often affect the outcome. By anticipating change, you can ride the wave versus letting it knock you over. And when it does, I recommend following the advice from new US President Obama…
“…We must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again…”ALWAYS: You are always in control of how you act and react to the outcome of change. In fact, the only thing in life you can truly control is you. The philosopher, Jean-Paul Sartre offered this advice…
“Freedom is what you do
with what’s been done to you.”Therefore…
- Anticipate change. Look for signs and trends indicating change may be on the way so you can be better prepared when it arrives. Books, blogs, and business articles help.
- Learn to see the upside of change, and make it work in your favor. Being the first manager or company to implement a new customer service philosophy will give you an advantage.
- Know the difference between things you can affect and the change that you have no control over.
You’ve probably heard the phrase…
“Grant me patience to bear the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can,
And wisdom to know the difference.”
- Sometimes change simply requires understanding “It is what it is,” and moving on. Acceptance and understanding can take you further than waiting for things to change back.
And finally… Don’t forget the way “it was.” While change keeps ticking, what’s old often becomes “new” again.
As a professional, how do you cope with the need to change? Changes to the role of marketing? Changes to customer needs? Changes in technology? Changes in the way customers get information? Changes in the demand for your products or services? How have you learned to evolve to avoid becoming extinct?
PETER ROST COMMENTS
Peter Rost, M.D., is a former Pfizer Marketing Vice President providing services as a marketing expert, speaker and writer. He is the author of Emergency Surgery, The Whistleblower and Killer Drug. You can reach him on rostpeter (insert symbol) hotmail.com.
Friday, March 27, 2009
The right size
I’ve been thinking a lot about issues of scale and units of measure.
Many businesses that are in trouble are in trouble for a simple reason: they’re the wrong size.A newspaper that only had a few dozen employees would be doing great today. But they have hundreds or thousands of employees because that was an appropriate scale twenty years ago. When I started my first web company fifteen years ago, the idea that you could be successful with six or ten employees was crazy, but today many of the most successful companies have not many more than that. That’s 15,000 fewer employees than eBay has.
It’s tempting to get bigger. But is bigger better? In many cases, it’s worse, particularly when you can leverage reliable systems that are cheaper and faster and more stable in the outside world. If you can make your product better by assembling it yourself, you should. But if that action makes it worse, why do it?
Which leads to the idea of figuring out what the unit of manufacture or delivery is. Do you deliver the entire solution or just a piece of it? Twitter delivers a sentence, sandwiched in between two other people’s sentences. A blog delivers a series of longer pieces, sandwiched in between other pieces by the same person. A website delivers page after page of pieces, all from the same organization. What’s the unit that works right now?
Creative Computing delivered an MP3 player. That was the unit. Apple changed this and delivered the player, the software, the music store, the headphones and the retail outlet. Both sold music, ultimately, but Apple choose a far wider unit. Very risky, but it worked.
The flip side works as well. If you want Kona coffee in Senseo pods, the web makes it easy to find. Aloha doesn’t have to subsidize the cost of the entire system, worry about shelf space or build coffee makers. They can just make a profit from a small piece of the entire system.
Ford Motor used to hire shepherds to tend Ford sheep on Ford land so they could weave Ford fabric to put on the seats of Ford cars. Today, of course, that’s crazy. One day soon there will be car companies that have 200 employees.
So many businesses are stuck on tradition. What happens to your agency or brokerage or factory or freelance practice when you make the unit of measure bigger? smaller? Why are you assuming that your scale is correct?
Posted by Seth Godin on March 25, 2009 | Permalink
Again Seth you look to me as a mind reader, this post is in line with many of yours that you shared with all your fans in your marvelous book: small is the new big, where I find myself, for the first time and against all what is happening to me, might be right !!!
