Why Adaptable Businesses Are Built Better

Every business owner wants their business to succeed, but unfortunately, not all of them will. There are both objective and subjective factors that can influence the survivability of your company, and it pays to study both successful and unsuccessful examples of businesses so that you can put yours in a better position to succeed.
Adaptable businesses tend to be highly successful, but why is this the case?
And how can you make your own business more adaptable?

The Power of Adaptability
Adaptability comes in many forms. Businesses can update their product and service offerings, optimize internal systems and processes, and devise entirely new strategies in the realms of branding, marketing, and sales. Adaptable businesses are capable of making these changes, making them quickly, making them intelligently, and making them consistently.
There are several advantages of this:
· Responsiveness to new threats. For starters, adaptability allows a business to be much faster and more responsive to new threats. If there’s a new competitor on the market, a sudden change in demographic behaviors, or any new market influences that change the game, adaptable businesses have the power to make internal changes required to account for those threats and hopefully counter them.
· Agility and loss recovery. Similarly, adaptability allows businesses to recover more quickly from losses and detrimental incidents. If you suffer from plunging sales, or similarly bad performance, you can quickly figure out the root cause of the problem and put an end to it. Obviously, not all problems are so easily solved, but an adaptable mindset equips you with the agility necessary to start solving most problems faster.
· Speed of deployment and competitive edge. Speaking of speed, adaptability gives you a faster rate of product and service deployment, along with a significant competitive edge because of that. If you can launch new products and services faster than your competitors, you can win more market share.
· Unshackling of obsolescence. Legacy brands have significant power in terms of recognition, assets, and influence. However, they’re also burdened by existing infrastructure and processes, which can sometimes be inefficient – or downright obsolescent in terms of capabilities. Remaining adaptable allows you to unshackle your business from these obsolete components that could otherwise drag it down.

How to Become More Adaptable
So how do you become more adaptable as a business?
· Adopt adaptability into your core values. A great starting point is to incorporate adaptability into your core values. Core values are more than just branding fluff; they’re supposed to dictate the internal dynamics of your organization. Make sure your leaders are both well versed in and emblematic of your core values, and hire people intelligently so that you can curate the type of team capable of carrying your core values into fruition.

· Lead from the top down. In line with this, pay especially close attention to how your leaders speak and make decisions. If your leaders are very stubborn and steadfast in existing processes, your employees will have no inspiration to be adaptable in their own work. Conversely, if your leaders are constantly considering new ideas and at least occasionally mixing things up, your employees are more likely to do the same.

· Decentralize decision making. In many cases, it pays to decentralize your decision making; in other words, break up any overly bureaucratic or hierarchical systems in your business so that decisions can be made closer to the origin points of the problems they’re meant to solve. This allows decisions to be made faster and more clearly, as well as more consistently. To be fair, decentralized decision making isn’t a perfect system, and it’s not the right fit for every business or every department. However, when used responsibly, it can be incredibly powerful.

· Empower your employees with autonomy. Give your employees as much autonomy as your business can handle. Enable them to make their own decisions and approach their work however they want. In addition to improving your adaptability, it will make your employees happier.

· Embrace novel ideas. As you might imagine, adaptable businesses need to be ready and willing to embrace novel ideas. Regular creative brainstorming sessions and an attitude that “no idea is stupid” can go a long way here. Try to cultivate an environment where everyone is comfortable sharing their thoughts and unique ideas.

· Accept failures as temporary. Adaptability isn’t always fun. One of the costs of ongoing experimentation is periodic failure, which can range from a hindrance to a catastrophe. Your business and the people within it need to be willing to accept failures as both reasonable and temporary.

Greater adaptability is a benefit for nearly any business, and it comes with more benefits than we can concisely display here. The trick is finding a way to incorporate adaptability without also opening the door to new vulnerabilities; these strategies are meant only to get you started.