Navigating change in the current climate – top 3 insights and trends

The Dafferns Business Leader Group is a peer community bringing together business leaders to discuss emerging trends, share insights and best practice and to provide accountability to each other. We help by facilitating and coaching them to bring about change. 

Here are the top 3 insights and trends emerging from this group in 2023. 

1 Make time for strategy

Recent research from Mindshop shows that 72% of people want to grow their businesses in 2023 but only 47% have a plan. People we talk to are challenge-heavy and time poor; they say they are too busy to step back. There is the risk of continuing doing what they have always done. 

Strategy sounds serious and complicated, but in reality, strategy is merely having a clear sense of direction to inform decisions and actions. It gives you focus; it allows you to identify priorities. 

So, I encourage you to hit the PAUSE button. We can help you start by taking a couple of hours away from the business to reset and refocus. We use a simple NOW, WHERE, HOW framework. Ask yourself some questions: what’s working, what’s not working, what needs to change? 

2 Be more customer centric 

Good strategy has always focused on customers’ needs and challenges. It’s easy to lose sight of the customer and for our plans and actions to be too internally focused. We tend to look from the inside out, rather from the outside in. 

Customers are facing challenges too, so how can we create loyalty through greater customer engagement. Questions we should be asking include, in changed circumstances how can we add value, how do we adapt our existing products and services, what new products and services can we add? 

Good customer relationships are built on trust – credibility, reliability, intimacy and lack of self-interest. 

So put the customer back at the heart of what we do! 

3 Change your mindset

Times have been challenging! Emerging from 2 years of the pandemic, we find economic uncertainty, supply chain issues, inflation, increasing cost of money, people and skill shortages. 

Energy levels are low. There is a lot of talk about resilience – the ability to bounce back from adversity. Resilient people are good at where to focus their attention. Focus on what you can change and not what you can’t. 

The question to ask is how can I turn this challenge into an opportunity? In our Business Leader Group, we call it Leveraging chaos. Opportunities may include: to refine and adapt your business model, business rightsizing, looking again at systems and efficiency, revisiting pricing strategy, competitor analysis. 

Consequences are driven by your beliefs and resultant behaviours. How you think determines outcomes.  

How to navigate change? 

We can help. Our Strategy in Action 2-hour sessions will give you and your team space to refocus. Join our Business Leader Group workshops for an opportunity to create and refine your plans. For more information contact Richard here.