Where does your business need a renaissance?

Optimization without reinvention is stagnation.

THINK ON IT: Where does your business need a renaissance?  

Optimizing your business is something every leader knows they have to do, and most know how to do it. Optimization is 90% of what leading an organization is about, after all. 

Yet, optimization without reinvention is stagnation and it’s more of a challenge to move from optimization to reinvention. 

Heaping water and fertilizer on a plant is one thing, but eventually the plant is going to be constrained by the size of the pot it’s planted in. Once it reaches its top-line limit, it’s going to need a bigger pot, one that suited to its new size and gives it room to grow again. 

For your business to move into new-to-you territory, you’re going to need to transform it, to reinvent it. Give it a bigger planter, so to speak. 

Here are a few indicators that your organization is ready for a renaissance:

• You’ve outgrown your own structures. Physical ones, yes—like warehouses and office space. But this can also look like outgrowing your current team’s knowledge, experiences, or skill sets. 

• There’s a big new opportunity—or an equally big competitive threat. For example, Artificial Intelligence is causing a lot of people to look at how they can reinvent their business as they start down a rapidly changing technology environment that they hadn’t previously considered. 

• You’ve lost a big customer or market share. Trying to backfill those lost dollars may take too long—or be impossible. A new approach is needed.

Optimization will enable you to scale up, so that if you go viral or semi-viral, your business can handle it. But optimization won’t take you beyond that single viral event. Optimization doesn’t have a cure for outgrowing your structures. It can’t cure a big customer loss or help you beat the competition to a new technology. 

That’s where reinvention steps in. 

Most businesses could not optimize their way through the pandemic. They had to radically rethink the delivery of their entire business. Restaurants moved from dine-in to family-style takeout meals. Manufacturers had to sort out new supply chains on the fly – or pivot their product entirely. Grocery outlets and big box stores started shopping for their customers and delivering orders to open car trunks. 

The pandemic forced us to reinvent what we did, but there’s no need to wait for the next pandemic to bring your organization through the kind of renaissance it needs.

“The good enough leader operates within the givens of a system to benefit a single group, executing a mission as directed, taking on the problems of the day. In contrast, a great leader defines a mission, acts on many levels, and tackles the biggest problems. Great leaders do not settle for systems as they are, but see what they could become, and so work to transform them for the better, to benefit the widest circle.”

— Daniel Goleman

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​​Premium subscribers: Read on for the last in a three-part series on strategic change about how to lead a renaissance in your business.

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