How to Adapt to Changes in Your Business’s Environment

Some of you know I’m an aspiring pilot. And I recently got my night rating, which means I’ve learned how to fly at night.

And that was a little scary at first, but I learned a lot. And some of what I learned is directly applicable to business.

Well, it’s like this.

When you’re flying during the day it’s familiar it’s what I do the most of, and I’m used to how that works. You can see out the plane, you can see how far you are from things, your altitude, people, other planes around you.

It’s a different level of situational awareness that at night, when everything is generally black, and you’re looking at a few lights off in the distance.

It’s harder to judge distances and it’s harder to judge altitude and things like that.

Especially when you’re landing. When you’re landing during the day, you can see the whole airport, everything around it. You can see the runway.

At night, all you see is maybe a rotating beacon, a string of lights leading up to the runway, and just lights on either side of it. You can’t see the actual runway until you’re almost on top of it. And all of a sudden, you’ve got to react.

Night flying is like when you’re in your business, you’re serving, doing what you do, you’re still flying, you’re still serving or selling, but you’re in a different market, a different environment. The variables change a little bit.

The physics of what you do are still the same, but the way you do it, what you’re looking for, how you’re working your way through the situation is a little different.

I’ll give you two examples.

One is, you’re used to selling to small business and now you choose to sell to larger business. Well, you’re still selling your product or service, but the way you do it, who you engage with, the times, the sales cycle, the influencers that you need to work with, you might not be working directly with the decision maker.

There might be a bid process. You have to get on an approved vendor list. You might be doing tenders or bids. It might be the lowest dollar quote. The environment has changed.

To get to a sale, you have to do things slightly differently. You have to keep your eye on different data points, different variables, in order to be successful. You can’t do it the exact same way. You’re still selling, but the way you go about doing it, you have to do things slightly differently. You have to keep your eye on different data points, different variables, in order to be successful.

You can’t do it the exact same way. You’re still selling, but the way you go about doing it what you look at is going to be a little bit different.

You need to be aware of what those differences are. Those variables shift depending on what your business is.

Another example could be say, you’ve grown your business to the point where you’re opening a new location.

Well, the way that you run as a leader, the way that you run Location One, when you leave to run Location Two, you’re not going to have the visibility into what’s going on day to day in Location One, because Location Two is now taking up a large portion of your time and attention.

So you don’t have the variables. You don’t have the data, you don’t have the inputs you need to make a decision.

You need to make sure you get them, but it’s not going to be because you’re there and hearing things and seeing things.

You’re going to have to make sure that you’re meeting with your executive team, your leadership team. You need to make sure that you’ve got good reporting and good data.

So you can make those decisions. You need good chains of command and executions. So while you’re not there, stuff is still getting done.

Now the business is still operating the same, but the way you engage it, is going to be a little bit different. And that’s like flying at night, when you don’t have all the data points.

It’s different.

So as you are growing your business anticipate what’s coming. What do you need to be aware of down the track for how things are going to change as you grow? How do you need to manage those things?

If you’re not sure where to start with that, happy to have a chat, hit me up for a conversation.

I’m a resource for you, I’m always available to have a conversation helping you get some clarity with what needs to happen in your business.

So that’s it for this week. Happy flying, stay safe enjoy the new environment of your business growth.Some of you know I’m an aspiring pilot. And I recently got my night rating, which means I’ve learned how to fly at night.