Business Change = Strengthened Internal Capabilities

By M. Isi Eromosele

Business change comes in many guises, including discovery of new market opportunities, revealing of new business threats within a market segment, finding new applications for existing products and formulation of enhanced marketing processes.

Implementing responses to the issues indicated above require recurring adjustments in internal business processes and corporate policies to align resources in dealing with them.

Organizations that have fostered and established a flexible and innovative corporate culture will have a much easier time scaling up or adjusting their internal corporate environment as required in order to respond efficiently to take advantage of opportunities or firmly respond to market threats.

Continued refinement of business practices provides the discipline that businesses need to objectively review and realign the resources they need to achieve sustained growth. This assures that the most excellent capabilities are retained, even while changing current corporate approaches.

An internal change, such as creating a new product line can be disruptive for an unprepared company. If a company is not prepared for it, even a basic change event can be very demanding on internal operations. A company’s internal systems should be able to deal with incremental change in a smooth and seamless way.

The company management and staff should be able to support and evolve with the changes necessary for the firm’s success in a continuously developing business environment. Technology should be implemented as a strong underpinning enabler for the business changes that occur within any business to succeed.

In affecting changes, whether they are internal adjustments such as product development, or external ones such as complying with new government regulations, it is imperative that a company retain its basic values and goals, even as its techniques of operations evolve. The need to structure for corporate stability as well as instability must be fully disseminated, despite the apparent contradiction.

Specific principal business elements will have to remain constant even as other core components are modified. It is very important that an atmosphere of shared vision and clarity of mission be encouraged to provide a common supporting foundation for management and staff, even as operational changes are occurring.

Internal business changes will affect company staff in different ways respectively. Core employees, who would normally interact only with internal peers will benefit from clarity of company mission and business objectives, even as they adjust to new business practices. These employees, considered central resources, range from human resources to middle level and line operating staff at company headquarters.

They would tend to have fixed daily routines and may not always be proactive in pointing out ways that could result in their jobs being streamlined through the implementation of new procedures.

Another group of employees that play a critical role in business change are the “edge” workers. These employees interact with customers and suppliers, representing key touch points for change implementations and intelligence gathering.

They are the first line of intelligence, providing key information about changing customer needs. Formal regular access to the information they gather should be an integral part of your business change efforts.

M. Isi Eromosele is the President | Chief Executive Officer | Executive Creative Director of Oseme Group - Oseme Creative | Oseme Consulting | Oseme Finance

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