From The Business Coaching Chronicles-A Little Extra Change

Most people are resistant to change. They desire improvement but they resist changing their everyday routine. That’s a problem because, as leadership expert Max DePree says, “We cannot become what we need to be by remaining what we are.” To sharpen your talent through practice, you need to do more than just be open to change. You need to pursue change—and you need to do it a little bit more than other achievers. Change-Understand Why You Are Changing In my personal business coaching practice I had a client, for a very short period of time, who was in the financial services business. He had just purchased another very successful practice. He brought me on to collaborate with him and to build the future he envisioned when he purchased the business. Every person or entity that purchases a business does not purchase it for what it is doing today. What it is doing today dictates in large part the terms of purchase. Businesses are purchased because of the better future the buyer or buyers feel that it will bring. And, once purchased they want to make changes to start molding the business into helping them have the future they desire. Unfortunately, many times in their eagerness to put their immediate imprint on a business they make changes that are not good. This is what happened to my client. Change For The Worse–Process In a period of a year, he managed to take a very profitable business and turn it around to where it was very unprofitable. How did he do it? Running a small business is a lot of work but when you can’t get out of your own way it becomes overwhelming. The first thing he changed were some of the core processes without consulting the client base. Why? He wanted to make it more convenient for him. He started with a strong client base of 40 clients. A year after his changes he had 10 clients. Change for the Worse—People He also managed to alienate every employee. How did he do this? As a self-employed business owner coming from the corporate world he believed that the business was all about him. For years he had to adhere to what’s right instead of who’s right. But now that he was a business owner it was all about who’s right. Employee turnover was great and attitudes fell and in the process so did customer satisfaction. Change for the Worse—Brand Now that the process and people were headed in a negative direction the company brand which had been extremely positive in the area now became a negative. The leads for new clients that used to roll in completely dried up. The business is now gone. It was sad to watch something that was so good and vibrant die. And it all happened because of a little bit of change in many areas. And a little bit of change without understanding why make the change, brought one large failure.