Managing the ever accelerating pace of change creates a challenge for leaders. In the race to stay ahead, what parts of your business do you preserve and what should you break?
The competitive advantage of your exclusive product or service erodes quickly these days. Sustaining a program of continuous innovation and improvement is mandatory to stay ahead of the disruptive forces of unrelenting, rapid change.
Implementing such a program drives you to acquire new skills and knowledge that strengthens your mastery and credibility, enabling you to remain valuable to your customers. But the price of progress for these endeavors is deciding what to keep and what to leave behind.
What should you preserve and what should you break?
We are all encouraged to learn and grow in our work. We read blogs and position papers. We attend conferences and workshops. We seek to remain vigilant so we can find and share a new idea, or refine a process, or invent something new and valuable, or connect with a new customer. Our organizations need us to do this because, in this time of constant change, they need all hands on deck to stay ahead. We’re often rewarded for doing things better, for breaking things.
While core values, company culture, customer relationships and a few other critical elements of your business may be worth preserving, isn’t part of your job to break things? Stop stalling, reviewing, questioning, playing it safe or doing anything else that delays your action. Nothing is absolutely failsafe, and the failure to act can be very expensive.
How do you sustain innovation and continuous improvement?
How is initiative encouraged in your business?
