Is Your Business Adapting or Dying?

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As I travel around the country, today is day 198, and work with and speak to small business owners, by in large, I’m hearing the same thing.

Entrepreneur after entrepreneur is sharing with me their struggles. Most are even panicked and filled with uncertainty. Many are hanging on as best they can.

Here’s the reality…the ways in which we do business today are accelerating at a pace few can keep up with.

Here’s the other reality…adapt or die! The decision is yours.

“In times of change, the learners inherit the earth. While the learned find themselves beautifully equipped for a world that no longer exists.” ~Eric Hoffer

Since early 2008 I’ve been saying this very same thing. I must sound like a broken record. It’s not that I”m trying to scare people. It’s not that I’m panicked. It’s just what American business owners need to hear.

Look, we know we’re living in a period of widespread, unsettling change and growing economic uncertainty. Every day seems to bring with it a new cause for anxiety. But the great philosophers of the past have recommended something very different from that reaction — creative adaptation.

A situation, in business or otherwise, becomes favorable only when we look for new opportunity and adapt to it. The human species is not conditioned to look for opportunity in times of adversity and small business owners are not immune.

Yet, that’s EXACTLY what business owners must do right now.

The art of creative adaptation consists of three components:

• Sight. First, you must see things as they are. Not worse than they are or better than they are. Evaluate the current economic conditions. Your business conditions. Your industry’s conditions. Most importantly, evaluate — YOU. When’s the last time you upgraded your skills, your talents, your knowledge, your mindset?
• Vision. Adaptive entrepreneurs see things as they can be. In economically unpredictable times, our imaginations can easily run wild, projecting worst-case scenarios, and taking our emotions to a place we don’t need to go. The only reliable cure for negative imagination is creativity and innovation. When we use our mind to project desirable scenarios we actually strengthen our ability to make those things happen. What are you envisioning daily? Doom and gloom or awe-inspiring. How often are you spending time in a creative space? What have you innovated lately? Maybe it’s time to reinvent yourself??
• Commitment. Long-lasting entrepreneurs make the commitment to create things as they want them to be. They don’t get stuck with how things are today. In tough times it’s critical to make the commitment to making things better. When you commit you realign your focus and attention to ensure you are always making progress. This component isn’t all that sexy, but it’s critical. You must commit to a laser-like focus of your vision and take daily consistent action toward it.

We’ll continue to explore ways to adapt to the new business climate on this blog. After all, the title is The Edge of Innovation. In the meantime, I’ll leave you with three more questions to consider…

1. Are you using your imagination to serve you or sabotage you?
2. Are you creatively adapting or sticking with status quo and stagnating?
3. Are you trying to do the same old things better or are you doing better things?

What other questions should we be asking ourselves as small business owners?