Peter Ranyard shows that accepting changes in your environment is a recipe for extinction.
Some scientists presume that the dinosaurs became extinct because they starved to death: eating every living or growing thing until there was nothing left. However, there are some dinosaur species still alive today, at least some that evolved sufficiently enough to survive the loss of sustenance. They evolved and adapted to the conditions of the time.
The same can be said in business today. Failure to evolve to changing markets, changing financial conditions, increasing customer demands for lower costs or higher quality can, if not considered, carefully force some businesses out of business.
What does evolution look like then for a business? The truth is it lies in the simple philosophy of “constant and never-ending improvement”, or CANI as I like to call it. Never stop looking at systems and process and becoming complacent that all is good and well the way things are. As the saying goes, “the more things change, the more they stay the same”,, the opposite is also true; the more things stay the same, the more they change.
Failure to look into every aspect of the sales, marketing, manufacturing, production and people and systems can eventually lead to stagnation. Even if after reviewing a system or process, and things don’t need or want to change, there is always the opportunity to refine a process or a system.
Recently I helped a company that had been using the same suppliers for over 18 years, because of blind loyalty, to carry out a review of all their pricing and supply contracts to discover that over 20% of their suppliers had increased their pricing incrementally over time to where they were no longer competitive with the competing suppliers. Company margins had gradually been eroded over time simply because the business had not passed on any cost increases to their customers. Immediately a Pareto study was carried out to begin to look at largest to smallest cost variances coupled with a review of competitive suppliers; in most cases, changes were made to improve the cost base.
When did you last look at your suppliers or contracts or pricing and consider a review? You may be missing out on thousands of dollars. But more importantly, when did you consider the next stage in your evolution? When did you last think that everything is fine and dandy, just as the competition began to eat your lunch?