Is your business or career losing relevance?

Is your business or career losing relevance?

Tim Connor

Last year over 125,000 businesses failed. The number of business failures every year for years has been consistent and why?  Simple – the organizations that have failed lost relevance – to their customers, members and/or the marketplace.

Relevance – being connected: having some sensible or logical connection with something else such as a matter being discussed or investigated.  Having social significance: having some bearing on or importance for real-world issues, present-day events, or the current state of society or business.

Now my definition – the ability to bring real world experience, reality and perceptions into decisions, actions, activities and behavior that maintain a connection between your business’s products and services and buyer needs, wants and trends and the direction of market, technology and social influences.

There are many factors that contribute to or determine relevance whether in your business, career, non-profit, association, church or government agency but here are just a few;

Timing, Ego management,  Business emotional maturity, Fostering of creativity and imagination, Letting go of the past, Successfully managing change, Improving knowledge, Staying connected – Letting go of arrogance, Developing new mindsets, Effective growth management, Creating a leadership oriented culture, Identifying and preparing for economic and market trends, Staying in touch with reality, Creating an empowered organization culture and Successfully anticipating and preparing for economic and market trends.

How are you doing?  Why not give yourself an excellent, average or poor grade in all the above? 

Not sure how you are doing?  Well, here are a few things to consider that will help you determine what grade you should give yourself or your organization.

-Is your market expanding or shrinking?

-Are you losing or gaining customer loyalty?

-Got too many “Sacred Cows?”

-Micro-managing your organization or employees?

-Finding it more difficult to keep or attract the best new employees?

-Spending too much time, energy or resources stuck in the weeds?

-Are you confused about how to use technology to stay relevant?

-Is your income stable or declining?

-Do you often wonder what you should do next

-Scared of the future?

-Think about throwing in the towel now and then?

-Growing too fast and this is creating organization dysfunction in some way?

I could go on for hours with these questions so I’ll leave you with a thought and a question.

Any organization or individual, if they are to stay the test of time must remain relevant to its customers, prospects, market and stay aware of and successfully manage their response to evolving trends. 

Are you willing to seriously consider the issue of relevance and any or all the above items?

FYI: For the past two years, this has been my most requested speaking topic for both organizations, non-profits and associations! Go figure