A fresh perspective

18th September 2013

I recently had a call from someone who had received a marketing letter from me, who said that he thought that maybe I could be just the person he needed to help him. It turned out that he had a decent business which he had been running for years, but his words to describe it were something along the lines of “It’s O.K, but nothing ever changes. Whatever we seem to do, we get roughly the same turnover, with roughly the same profits, and so it goes on from year to year.” So he had finally decided to bring someone in from outside to make things charge.

The thing is that many business owners recognise they need to change the way things are done, but because they are so set in their ways, and so blinkered by looking at their business from the same perspective, that more often than not they end up merely tinkering with peripheral things and they don’t make the fundamental changes that will really make a difference.

Looking from outside (as I do) it’s often far easier to see what needs to change, and I can ask the awkward questions that no-one involved in the business feels able to do. Even when I start to make suggestions to instigate meaningful change, more often than not there will still be a certain amount of resistance, and it can take a lot of pushing and pulling to finally get the owner to take action.

Change begins either with a clear vision of what you want to achieve, or if it is beginning to get extremely uncomfortable where you are (or a combination of both). But even with these drivers, more often it is really useful to have someone to steer you in the right direction, and to help you take the right steps, so that the changes you make work out for the better. Fear of change because you might make it worse is a natural reaction, but if you keep on doing what you have always done, there is certainly no likelihood of anything improving.

---

Comments are closed.