The walls built up over so many years between customers, employees, management and shareholders are collapsing. This dictates a new type of relationship and commands a new approach. Openness, honesty, transparency, sharing and collaboration that result in mutual benefits and value will drive business performance and, more importantly, business sustainability.

It’s time to throw away the job descriptions, brush aside ego’s, change the emphasis to people, realise your product is as good, or, crap as your competitors and be aware that not one person has the power/decision making role anymore. Leadership too is fundamentally changing.

The impacts of these changes are creating new vulnerabilities and ’sore thumb’ opportunities for businesses. It will mean friction and tension. Fabulous, however, usually great ideas and innovations come out of that!

If this is true, we need to start focusing on the people aspects of our business, rather than the sometimes unhealthy, overbearing focus on our products. There are no crap products in the world nowadays just similar ones. Our true competitive advantage is in how we tap the brains of the people around us. Here’s two ideas:

1. Get together some customers and influencers and discuss the future. This new way of doing things. How the mortality rate for lots of business models is rising. What trends will come true what won’t. Have a debate about the implications, the impact, the positives, the negatives.

2. If you’re the boss, get your team together on a monthly basis and initiate an interactive and engaging chat about various topics. Not the usual stuff like “how many new customers can we generate,” or “how do we reduce wastage.” But, stuff like “How can we be more authentic?” “How can we influence customers rather than control them.” “How can we work collaboratively with competitiors.”

The point; use a little imagination. If you are going to take time out of peoples day, make it interesting, make it provocative, take people out of their comfort zones. They will find it challenging, possibly terrifying, perhaps liberating. At least you will have acted as catalyst for thinking and, in today’s knowledge economy, thats really what its about.

It’s easy to get stuck in a cycle of movement and we can all be forgiven for thinking that our business is changing, doing new stuff and improving results, when in fact, it’s not. You’re just going round in circles, embedded in what I call ‘revolving door’ syndrome.

Take a look at the new Bailey’s advert http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YjW4iFuO-WU They have added a ‘coffee’ alternative to their product range under the pretense that it’s product development but it just feels like a desperate attempt to compete with new entrants to the market. Its false, this isn’t change, it’s just messing about.

Many companies are guilty of ‘re arranging the deck chairs on the Titantic.’ Look carefully at you business, as each month and year passes, are you just revolving or are you truly evolving?

You may have the best, even most innovative product on the market. You may be developing the most talented team with the latest leadership skills. You may have a significant competitive advantage through your brand. But if you’re not preparing your company for the effect of globalisation and the changes that will bring, you could fail in the blink of an eye.

Change and the speed of change will increase and affect the way we do business. Wealth and success will change and the definitions of those words will become very individual. Growth of your business will be different, how you make a profit will change and competition will be even greater.

Trust will be your most important asset with customers and employees. You will need to justify why you are different at every step even if it means you are cheaper. Technology will drive your business and we will become obsessed with trends. Marketing is changing and rapidly. No longer will you have brochures or attend that exhibition, that part of your budget will be spent online.

One of the best investments you can make at the moment is to read a couple of books on the subject of globalisation and get geared up. According to the leading experts on the matter, it is here to stay so we better damn well understand the implications for our small business.

There are early warning signs that a business is in trouble:

1. Complaints by the senior team that it never used to be like this.

2. Lots of new competitors taking a large share of what you used to do.

3. Excess provision of what you do in the market place.

4. Your only differentiator is price and, as a result, margins come under pressure.

5. Too much risk management and an excess of market research.

6. Belief that it won’t happen to you.

7. The MD spends too much of his/her time looking over their shoulder.

8. The business is static, gripped in a fever of stand off. Avoid the issue and it will go away.

Big and small, a downturn takes no prisoners. Thousands of business with the above problems are being gobbled up by business with dynamic strategies, innovative thinking and differentiated products/services.

If you are doing one of the above, you’re possibly in trouble. Turn it on its head and change it and rapidly.

If you’re team distrusts you, if they feel under confident in your abilities, if they suspect a management centric motivation, or, they are of a cynical persuasion, they will nearly always resist change, particularly, the more disruptive the idea.

One of the critical skills of a leader isn’t delegation (far from it) it is to build trust. Trust is all about your intentions. Being open and honest. Doing what you said, inspiring and being passionate. Having conviction and being consistent. It’s also about your abilities. Showing confidence, achieving what you said you would. Being optimistic. Having great credibility and a reputation to match that is recognised outside the company too!

Building trust through a deliberate use of intentions and abilities, allows change to happen naturally, transparently and quickly.

As managers of small businesses we are constantly fighting and struggling against the flow. Customers, staff, suppliers, competitors and shareholders are all competing for our attention. Our minds can get buried in the day to day operations, the immediate dangers and the problems we think needed solving yesterday. Our concentration becomes the floor rather than the horizon, and what we should be focusing on disappears into oblivion. Just to help you think about things ask yourself these few questions:

Reflect on how well you  focus on

Opportunities rather than problems?

Purpose rather than tasks? 

Meaningful rather than money?

Real work rather than busy work?

Long term rather than short term?

Flexibility rather than control?

Trust rather than doubt?

Positive rather than cynicism? 

Then think about where you need to be spending more time. It may mean some change, it may mean changing a lot, but, being able to change where we spend our time as managers is a reflection on our ability, first, to reflect on our own growth needs, but also on where we create the most value.