A business strategy is key to any organization’s success. You can’t reach your destination if you don’t know how you plan on getting there.
However, that’s not to say you should adhere to your strategy religiously. You may limit your potential if you aren’t willing to adjust a strategy when necessary. In fact, being open to pivoting can help your business succeed.
The following are key reasons you need to be willing to change your plans at times.
You Can’t Predict Everything
Creating a business strategy involves many essential steps. One of them is to predict how you’ll react to various circumstances and factors that will impact your company.
That said, you can’t predict everything. That’s why successful CEOs have said they were only able to achieve success by constantly paying attention to the impact of various factors they hadn’t anticipated, and changing their strategies accordingly.
Preparation is important. Just don’t assume you’ve considered every situation you may need to prepare for.
You Might Need to Adapt
You should develop a business strategy that’s based on a thorough understanding of your industry. You’re far more likely to plan effectively if you’re an expert.
However, industries change. This is particularly true in today’s fast-paced world. Businesses that aren’t able to adapt to these shifts lose their competitive edge. After all, how many once-major retailers are now struggling (our have gone out of business) because they didn’t adapt to the rise in ecommerce soon enough?
This is a major reason flexibility is important at any organization. When times change, you need to change along with them.
Products & Services Evolve
Many successful businesses started by offering products and services that may be only tangentially related to what they now offer. For instance, the founders of Instagram originally intended to develop an app that allowed users to check in to public places and make social plans together.
This obviously didn’t work out. Instagram’s founders eventually realized the photo-sharing features of the original app were the only aspect users seemed to embrace. They shifted their strategy and ended up creating one of the most popular social media platforms in the world.
Having a vision for your business is important. That said, it’s equally important to adopt a new vision if your idea evolves into something other than what it began as.
You’ll Learn from Your Experience
Planning to grow a successful business isn’t the same as actually doing the work. Once you get involved in the practical tasks involved in pursuing your entrepreneurial goals, you’ll get much more real-world experience than you had before.
You’ll also learn from this experience. That means you’ll have the opportunity to adjust and improve your strategy as your own skills and knowledge expand.
This may be why a key study of CEOs found that business leaders who are willing to adapt to changes are more likely than others to succeed. They spend almost half of their time considering potential circumstances that may require a change of strategy. By not only learning new skills, but also applying those skills, they lead dynamic businesses that can remain competitive.
This is likely something you want for your own business. To reach such a goal, make sure you don’t consider your initial strategy to be the only route to success. There may come a time when you’re better off developing a new strategy or pivoting. You need to be ready when this happens.
