5 Steps for Increasing Small Business Success
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3. Discover opportunities including people, market and economic opportunities:
Business thinker and Harvard professor Clayton Christianson has famously talked about the impact of disruption in business success.
He has identified that innovators often come in at the bottom of a market, offering simpler, less expensive and even less quality services and products, disrupting a market and creating opportunities for themselves while muddying the market for established players.
Bill Gates was an example of someone who created a product to compete against the biggest players of the day, IBM, and by creating a cheaper, weaker and less comprehensive product, disrupted the market and created his own success.
4. Work hard but also work smart:
Blackberry, Yahoo and Kodak provide great examples of organizations that stopped working smart, failing to adjust their vision and plans.
As a result they were found themselves on one path where competitors found different paths.
If you work hard but have your head down you are not likely to see the opportunity to make adjustments. Frequently look around, ask questions and re-evaluate your strengths, weaknesses and opportunities. Don’t continue to pursue a plan just because you have a plan.
5. Step outside your comfort zone to create a little luck:
Too often when people are working hard and have their heads down they are focused primarily on the road ahead.
As a result, they miss the opportunity to create or find a little luck. Success is often impacted by serendipity, or happenstance. To take advantage of “Planned Happenstance” you need to be open to new opportunities on a regular basis. Looking not just up the road at your market and your competitors, but also beside and behind you so you can learn and challenge your thinking and assumptions.
You can learn a lot from others who are at all stages of their own journeys.
With the right timing and opportunity, and hard work, and ability and a little luck some people can find massive financial success. Unfortunately not all of us, even with hard work and ability, and some luck, will find massive financial success.
Sometimes elements of success our beyond our control and try as we might to take control and create opportunities we aren’t able to make things work as well as we hoped.
Related articles:
Small Business Revenue Growth and Success
Self Assessment for Personal and Small Business Success
