The only certainty is change today.  You will have new jobs and opportunities like never before.  You will have new friends and networks.  You may move a few times as well.  Regardless of changing circumstances, your ability to sail on tumultuous winds is directly related to how mobile and flexible you are.

Strategy For Managing Change

In turbulent financial markets, a key strategy is liquidity.  In the tectonic shift of the information age, businesses are figuring out how to do more with less and use the tools available today.  More than ever, your best strategy is mobility and flexibility.  The things you build will be changing quickly as new systems and ways of working continually pound on us as waves on a surf.  Mobility and flexibility allow you to bend when forces are acting upon you which you cannot control or predict.  Demand for your services or products may wane or change.  If you can change quickly, you may take advantage of new opportunities.  As Peter Drucker has said, “There are no products.  There are only markets.”

Paying Attention To The Details Of Your Life

There are many useless and sapping things, events, people and projects which only derail you.  Having a vigilance of what you let into your business and life is critical for ongoing success.  The overhead you may have become accustomed to continually obsolesces.  How about purging or updating things such as:

• Old hardware.  New hardware is cheap.
• Old software.  Move to cloud computing.
• Office space.  Work gets done virtually.
• “C” Talent.  Mediocrity continually costs.
• Difficult customers.  Not fun or profitable.
• Outdated Mindsets.  The world will pass you by.
• Selling.  Noone wants to be sold, but they are buying.

Strategy Consulting Experience

Invariably, the customers I work with have too much of old things and not enough of new things.  The process of moving them from their comfort zones of bricks, mortar and old systems and processes typically is an irrational one.  The world has changed, yet they have not.  New businesses prove this because they start with less, not more.  They are not trapped.  Furthermore, they are set up much more flexibly because the systems of doing business today lend themselves to it readily.

Here’s the gist, change is relentless and speeding up.  Think through how much can be streamlined in your operations and approach.  Get to the core.  Structure your business with mobility and flexibility as the goal.  This is the key strategy in a world of continual change.  With the new year coming, it’s a great time to focus on shedding old things.  I would love to hear how you are doing this in small and large ways with your comments.