The last two years have been a bumpy ride for organizations of all sizes globally. During this time, small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) were hit the worst. Since most SMBs have limited cash and resources, setbacks were much more severe for them than for big corporations with more resources.
Irrespective of whether your company had to completely shut down during the COVID-19 lockdowns or whether it had to create a touchless customer experience or transition to a remote workforce overnight, you may have had so much more at stake than the average business.
Whether you’re facing a global pandemic or something as simple as shifting market conditions, if you want to survive and reach your business objectives, you must improve your organization’s speed, adaptability and innovation. To do that, an SMB like yours requires even more business agility.
What is business agility?
Business agility is all about having systems in place that provide flexibility to respond quickly to rapidly changing conditions and opportunities by preparing your people, processes and technologies.
Businesses that prioritize agility can manage their growth in a flexible, independent and productive manner. As a result, efficiency increases and costs decrease.
With this approach, you don’t predetermine the way forward. Instead, iterative changes are made based on feedback loops generated throughout the growth process, such as from employees and other key stakeholders. You can prepare to make additional changes based on future suggestions once you’ve made changes to accommodate all the constructive recommendations. Since clients are also involved in the process, you can use their feedback to identify priorities and make changes.
Benefits of bringing agility to your SMB
More responsive to change
We, as humans, have a difficult time adapting to change. This resistance to adapt to change frequently spills over into our business as well, resulting in the stunting of our growth trajectory.