We'll Just Wait It Out In Our Garage
There was a time when sales department pep talks, employee rallies, motivating managerial sessions and corporate weekend getaways went something like this: Times may be hard now but just keep doing what you’re doing. Work hard, don’t give up; eventually things will get better. We will come out of this down time (together!) stronger in the end. In other words, demand for what we currently offer, how we currently offer it, will come back.
Rah Rah Rah and the crowd went crazy…kinda.
The effectiveness of perpetually doing whatever it was that we did yesterday in order to guarantee our continued future success tomorrow is quickly becoming, well,…ineffective.
We live in a world where demand for the old, boring and slightly unusable is nil. We interact in markets where doing the same thing over and over and over will not successfully endure. On the contrary, fortunately, we also live in communities where new, fresh and innovative ways of doing things are embraced and loved by an ever growing number. If you are exerting energy to maintain a status quo, trying desperately to solve problems and challenges from outdated and overused platforms, then you are going to disappear. You will be left where you currently are…in the past. We must be willing to embrace transition and change appropriately and accordingly, never sacrificing our values for a quick dollar or following, but always willing to change in order to get better and to help more people more efficiently and more effectively.
If you are (or quite probably now were) a newspaper company who believes you can just keep printing newspapers, and that eventually demand for your paper will go back up…you are going to lose. If you are a car company that believes it can keep manufacturing gas guzzling SUV’s, and that the demand for your vehicles will eventually go back up…you have already lost. If you are a small business that believes it can make do without an amazing website/blog, and that your customer base will continue to find you and use you regardless…you are going to lose. If you are a band who believes that your primary source of revenue over the next two years is going to be album sales, and that you don’t need to find a new creative way to generate cash…you should probably just stay in your parents garage.
Waiting it out until demand for your product or service comes back doesn’t work any more. Why? Because someone else out there is already figuring out a way to do what you do, better. Someone else is out there changing what you provide in order to make it easier and faster and more fun.
If we resist (aggressively fight!) change, then we are going to lose, and we are going to lose quickly. We must adapt. We must continually get better. We have to understand the ever fluctuating attitudes and desires of our followers, clientele, friends and co-workers, and we must evolve to meet them.
Embrace positive change, keep up with how it’s happening, leverage it to the best of your ability, come out of the hard times better than you were going into them.
I’m reading Tribes by Seth Godin and The Book of Acts from The Bible. Both of these books contain stories which pertain to amazing and courageous leadership and fighting the status quo in the face of adversity. I recommend them both for those who yearn to lead.
2 Comments
I think that the beginning of your post is so true of far too many sales and marketing departments. “What we do is good, it’s worked in the past. We just have to be consistent, and people will find us.”
NO. You need to be radical, unafraid to venture outside of the box and try new things. That’s what will being people in.
Sometimes, products do become commodities. All electric power in America is eminently reliable, and comes in only one variety (120VAC), so the only place to effectively compete is on price.
Everywhere else, though, waiting is almost always the worst possible strategy. Organizations need to do more, provide more usable products and services, and challenge every assumption fearlessly. Success often requires hard work, but progress requires begin ready to abandon the “we’ve always done it this way” mentality.
@robbyslaughter