Breathing Life into a Tired Company

ThinkstockPhotos-140412059No one likes to think of their company as being tired or old, but with time, many, if not most, do become so. Unless you are monitoring the company performance over time, you can miss the fact that it is no longer energetic, but has become tired, with declining sales, losing customers, its competitive edge, its brightest employees, etc. It’s sort of like entropy, where things just go downhill over time.

Most companies become tired as they stay with the same concepts and people who brought them their initial success and follow the axiom of “don’t break what is not broken.” But something doesn’t need to be broken to be fixed or replaced. Your old car may still work, but may be getting 15 miles per gallon and is a clunker. A new hybrid may get you 45 MPG, its GPS won’t get you lost; air bags and ABS will make your trip a whole lot safer, etc. And just think how many companies and industries have been put out of business by just one new concept: the smart phone. Their product or service was not broken, just made obsolete in almost the blink of an eye.

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So how does one go about revitalizing a company and breathing life back into it? The prescription for a tired company is to first figure out what the problem is and then go about fixing it.

Here are a few things needed to breathe life back into your company.

1. Find out honestly where things are and how much they have changed over time.

2. Compare your sales and profits when it was at its peak vs. where you are now.

3. Know what your market expects and your competitors have been doing during this same timeframe.

4. Add new bright and innovative people to your company.

5. Invest in new technologies to be relevant.

6. What have you learned from the above diagnosis and do you have the staff, capital resources, time and the commitment to make the changes that are needed?

If you have done all of these things you are now in a position to create and implement a game plan to convert a tired company into a vital one. It may take a substantial change in the way you have done business to make this happen but the longer one waits the harder this becomes. A good place to start is to come up with 10 new ideas for your company, from how to implement a price increase to creating innovative new services or products and selecting the three best and implementing them. Avoid being that company where so much time has passed since making changes that their proverbial car has now rusted away.

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Michael Neidle

Michael Neidle
Michael Neidle is president and CEO of Optimal Management, an advisor to staffing firm owners and managers.

Michael Neidle

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