How often do you look – and relook – at your company’s business strategy?
Unfortunately, many business owners no longer think about strategy from the moment they start trading. They see that very fact that they’re still in business x years after starting their company is proof enough that their ‘strategy’ is working.
The problem with failing to re-evaluate your strategy lies in the fact that the rest of the world isn’t sitting still, therefore challenging the validity of your original business model. It’s easy for us to fall into “momentum mode” – to keep doing what we’ve always been doing, simply because we’ve always been doing it.
However, momentum mode fails to take into account that we’re not doing business in a vacuum: no matter what the business, we’re reliant on a set of external influences existing in a certain alignment in order for the company to generate revenue.
Since they are “external” influences, we have not control over them. However, they can most certainly control us. For example, with growing consumer awareness about nutrition fast food outlets removed transfat-based oils and introduced healthier menu options.
The car industry has seen a radical shift in their markets in just a couple of years. They have been forced to change their offerings from large, inefficient automobiles to smaller ones that use cleaner and less polluting propulsion technologies.
Every industry has their unique set of external influences that govern the validity of your business value. Make you that you know the factors that influence your business – and keep an eye on where they’re heading.