I was having breakfast with a colleague this morning when he said, “Sometimes I don’t even know if we are in the right business anymore.”
The strange thing is that this exact idea has come up for a lot of my clients and friends lately.
I’m not sure what is driving this introspection on the part of such a large number of people, but I am not one to let an opportunity pass without noting it.
Because this feeling of unease around your business is something all of you should be embracing continuously.
Peter Drucker wrote a lot about entrepreneurship and innovation.
One of my favorite topics of his was the concept of “planned abandonment.”
Which is simply the idea that you should always be thinking about how to put certain parts of your business to rest. Or, that you should be thinking about how the market is impacting your business and what parts of your business aren’t keeping up with the demands.
That’s what I think my small sampling was feeling, the need to abandon certain parts of their business that they were wed to.
Its healthy.
I know I mention Pat Riley taking over the Miami Heat in the mid-90s far too often, but at the time I was a college kid that grew up in South Florida that loved the NBA. Pat Riley was a big deal.
But the thing about Riley that always impressed me the most was the concept of “change.”
“Change is the only thing in constant in life. And when change rears its beautiful face, you should embrace it.”
That’s really what all of us are dealing with, change.
We have no hopes of avoiding it.
We can only take advantage of the opportunities that change creates for us.
For the people I was talking with this morning, change is giving them a chance to rethink their businesses:
- Are they helping the right people?
- Are they telling the right story?
- Can they be more effective?
For all of us, we should be so lucky.
Let me ask you, are you rethinking the parts of your business that make you uncomfortable?