Change is Your Competitive Advantage

Strategies for Adapting, Transforming, and Succeeding in the New Business Reality

Karl G Schoemer

• Publisher: Adams Media
• Year: 2009
• Print ISBN: 9781598698015
• eBook ISBN: 9781440513817
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

Organizations today face a stark choice: change or fail. Transformation has become the only constant of the business landscape, and those companies that cannot adapt are doomed. But Karl Schoemer's New Reality program is here to help businesses make the tough choices that will lead to success. This book iincludes practical tools to help managers and employees:

• Adapt to change
• Identify Design/Defiant/Default behaviors
• Create a culture focused on the needs of the customer and consumer

This book includes case studies and anecdotes from Schoemer's clientele and positions executives and employees to make the most out of every change their company encounters.

APPENDIX

15 KEYS TO SUCCESS IN THE
NEW BUSINESS REALITY

The place where you work is now in a constant state of change. Competition comes from every corner of the globe. New technologies, innovative practices, and higher expectations have made long-term, stable relationships between businesses, employees, and their customers a thing of the past. “What have you done for me lately?” is more than a slogan—it’s the way we do business today.

As a result, every organization—including yours—is on the brink of extinction, with your products, services, and your job only minutes from being obsolete. What you do is most likely being done better for less, just down the street, in another part of your building, or on the other side of the world.

The “old days,” when companies acted more like the parents of a talented if unruly group of children, are gone forever. Today, most organizations can only afford to support those employees who care enough to give their very best—only those workers who care about the customers, and only those who care enough about the organization to take responsibility for its success—as well as their own.

Your choice is simple—whether to join the legions of employees who can’t move beyond complaining about the frustrations and limitations of their job, who use the difficulties created by constant change as an excuse for not changing—or to decide that you’re 159 going to do something about it, making it your business to understand and benefit from these changes.

The good news is that your path to success is clear. The responsibility is now exactly where it should be: squarely on your shoulders. It’s your responsibility to educate yourself, to make yourself marketable, to create your own employment security. You are responsible for your on-the-job performance, for your lunch, and for your future.

Success in this New Business Reality is based on knowledge:

Who has it. Who can get it. Who can use it. Your success depends on your knowledge of your job, your organization, your industry, your profession, your customer’s business and industry. But it depends especially on your understanding of what it takes to get the job done—the talents and experience that you need to create the value that your company’s business depends on.

Today’s organizations require a new set of skills—and it’s your responsibility to identify and develop them. Let’s take a quick look at what it takes to make it in the new world of work.

KEY #1

SET HIGHER STANDARDS
FOR YOURSELF

According to the management expert Peter Drucker, we are in the age of the knowledge worker. A “knowledge worker” is a new breed of employee who creates value by processing information to define and solve problems. Are you a knowledge worker? Don’t you use, manipulate, enter, access, process, or create information? Aren’t you expected to define and solve problems?

With the advent of global communications and competition, expectations are higher for every worker in every organization— regardless of what kind of business you’re in. It’s not good enough to simply “do the job” any more. Today you also are expected to contribute your ideas and intellect and to take responsibility and initiative for improving the way your organization works. At a minimum, you’re expected to know your job, know your industry, track the developments in technology, methodology, and business practices that affect your employer, and evaluate how those changes affect your work. You also need to know your competition—understanding how they approach similar problems and opportunities and what kind of competitive challenges they present.

There are critical differences between knowledge workers and workers in previous eras that raise the bar for your performance. A knowledge worker’s work is never done. There is no set number of widgets or billable hours that quantify success. Your work is only done when you have out-thought, out-innovated, and out-marketed your competition. This kind of competition rewards multiple approaches, frequent failure, and persistence. You need to develop your own benchmarks for success and make it your job to exceed them.

Every time you succeed, you raise the bar for your future performance. A great sales year is always followed by a higher revenue target. Your job is to come up with the next breakthrough, or program, or initiative, that will, inevitably, raise the bar again! There’s no time to rest on your laurels. Success breeds new challenges. The competitive marketplace will always take your innovation and use it to ratchet up your competition. You need to anticipate this up-cycle; only if you continue to set the bar high do you stand a chance of getting ahead of your competitors.

Setting higher goals, standards, and expectations for yourself marks you as a person who is committed to your organization’s success, as a top performer and a potential leader within the organization. As Peter Drucker put it, “Leadership is lifting a person’s vision to higher sights, the raising of a person’s performance to a higher standard.” Start with yourself, and your influence within your organization will grow as a result.

Here are some suggestions for meeting today’s higher
expectations:

Look for ways to raise your standards and expectations for yourself. It’s better to get ahead of changes in the workplace than to be forever trying to catch up.

Keep your eyes open for indications from your boss, your colleagues, or your customers that you need to raise your standards. Ask for clarification if you’re not sure.

Volunteer to take on new tasks or to cross-train to get a broader understanding of your organization’s business.

Keep up to date on developments in your company, your industry, and the technology, legislation, or markets that affect it.

KEY #2

SET A FAST PACE

New technologies and new developments in business operations will continue to increase the already rapid pace of change. In the past, organizations could actually plan to deal with change. Disruptive changes to their business came along at a much more manageable pace, and they had time to hold meetings, bring in consultants, and in general assimilate the change in an orderly way. Today, changes of all kinds and degrees appear much more frequently and unpredictably, giving organizations little time to prepare or recover.

Setting a faster pace means developing your personal ability to cope with the symptoms of rapid change: stress, frustration, and fatigue. Remember, this doesn’t necessarily mean just accelerating what you’re already doing. Sometimes it means making better decisions about your priorities. Sometimes it even means letting go of tasks that aren’t as critical. In this stressed-out environment, knowing what not to do is almost as important as knowing how to do it.

In the future, the pace will only quicken. In t...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• CONTENTS
• Introduction
• 01 Change—Fast Today, and Even Faster Tomorrow
• 02 Four Guarantees
• 03 More Change = Less Productivity
• 04 Resistance Is Natural
• 05 The Four Stages of Change
• 06 Communicating Through the Four Stages
• 07 Building a Change-Adaptive Culture
• 08 Three Keys to Managing Change
• 09 Control the Controllables
• Conclusion What Are You Going to Do about It?
• Appendix 15 Keys to Success in the New Business Reality