The best time to make improvements is when your competitors are hunkered down waiting for the fear to end.
Like now, in this current economic gloom and doom there’s plenty of whitewater visible:
- Media fears about a recession
- Tech giants shed 10,000s of extra workers
- Office buildings are still in trouble
Yet the recession hasn’t happened yet – as of today the USA is not in a recession according to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, real GDP increased 2.1 percent in 2022 from the 2021 annual level.
The rest of the economy is working, even as building owners and office employers still try to figure out where employees will work and how often.
While competitors hug their under-performing and ineffective status quo, the smart money is on getting ahead before everyone else gets back to the game (and they always do).
The Right Time to Improve is Now
Improving customer experience, selling, or operating will never be an immediate need until the heat is on.
That usually happens when a lagging indicator finally catches your boss’ attention and tells you bad things are happening. Now, not in some distant future, but right now.
So, why not start improvements before then?
Get Started Iteratively
It’s understandable this may not be the moment for an all-in, once-in-a-decade size project. But the most effective and reasonable improvements come in bite-sized chunks anyway.
Consider an iterative approach for improvements, like Sprints are used in Scrum methodology.
Smaller projects are a way of progressing while avoiding the deer in the headlights syndrome.
Why not now?
Lastly, “Embrace the Suck”
“Embrace the suck“ is military slang for consciously accepting or appreciating something that is extremely unpleasant but unavoidable.
Not the most elegant language but a strategy that makes the best of the world we live in now. Love the lemonade and the lemons.
We may be in a recession sometime in the future (again), business chaos and turmoil will be the flavor of the day (as it regularly is), but the time for opportunity is always greatest when the sky is cloudy. Time to take it.
