Ducking and weaving around inevitable change isn’t the way to get ahead in business, writes Avaza co-founder Tim Kremer. He offers five ways to stand up to your fear of change and even learn to love it.

Change is inevitable in every industry. Businesses need to recognise and respond to these opportunities before their competitors do, but many let their fear of change stop them from innovating.

Often it’s difficult to realise that limitations in business growth are self-imposed by mind maps from former success. Past perceptions limit what we ‘see’. 

Instead, if you take the approach of innovation and evolution, you can harness change to benefit your business.

1. Stay ahead of the pack

It’s really no wonder so many business owners have a fear of change. COVID changed our perception of change forever, but even before that life was unpredictable. Every day the world moves faster; new breakthroughs are announced and technologies are released regularly. The emergence of a younger workforce, more conditioned to accept this culture of permanent change, means established companies cannot be afraid to try new things if they want to stay relevant. New competitors are entering your market , so you need to stay ahead of the pack.

More customer-friendly and efficient competitors will keep launching. Great examples are online streaming services like Netflix, Amazon Prime, Paramount and Disney+, which are steadily stealing the audience of traditional terrestrial broadcasters.

What’s your streaming service-type threat? It’s important for your business to be aware of new competitors and emerging innovations so you can stay ahead of the curve.

2. Be open to evolving your product offering

Accept that fear of change is normal and accept it. Instead, be open to evolving your product offering.

Unfortunately over time, most teams and individuals become content to do what’s worked in the past. They’re often surprised when new competition begins stealing their customers.

This resistance to change is often pervasive and cultural, particularly among well established businesses. There also comes a time where the existing structure no longer serves either your staff or your customer.

Be open to evolving product offerings and take the time to explore and implement creative ideas that will allow you to keep catering to your target audience.

3. Improve your internal operations

A further way to pivot your fear of change is to improve your internal operations first and free up resources for strategy innovation.

Often I hear people say ‘I’m too busy to think about the future’. They’re continually fighting fires, and dealing with inefficient day-to-day processes. 

It’s important to regularly challenge the status quo, and ask ‘Why do we do things that way? Why are there manual steps here? Can this be automated?’

Change and innovation can come from any level of an organisation. So how can we free up time? I argue you should be using software to run your business. Whether working on projects or ongoing operational tasks, modern businesses should have an online work management system, like Avaza, where they can see what everyone’s working on. To that end, your team members should be able to see and collaborate on all their tasks assignments, set up recurring tasks, and develop project templates to save time.

4. Proactively innovate and stay in front

It’s important to proactively innovate in your market and lead from the front.

During steady growth stages and when businesses have a good cash flow, they often grow complacent, expecting everything to continue running smoothly. However, as the past few years have taught us, this is the best time to plan the next growth and diversification strategy.

Too many companies wait until they fall on desperate times to consider change. Instead, it’s important to regularly set time aside to talk to customers and ask them how your service could be improved. You should also take time to research your competitors to see what they’re doing.

5. Stay in startup mode

Treat change initiatives like startup projects – with that kind of structure comes success.

Whenever you want to ditch your fear of change and embrace a new innovation, treat it like a startup project. Specifically, create a project in a project management system, invite relevant team members and collaborate on the tasks that will be involved. Set deadlines, brainstorm ambitious goals and encourage your team to freely exchange ideas.

Most importantly, experiment, test and don’t be afraid to pivot your approach. There are many businesses in different industries that can learn from a ‘startup culture’, where change is embraced and innovation is the new normal.

This article was originally published in 2017 and has been updated for 2022.

Want more? Get our newsletter delivered straight to your inbox! Follow Kochie’s Business Builders on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn.