One Word Worth Building Your Business Around …

If one thing remains the same, it’s the knowledge that things will forever change. Ironic, right?! That’s because it is.

Think about it for a moment; the one thing we can depend on is that nothing will ever remain the same. It’s okay if the main emotion you’re feeling right now is frustration. It’s incredibly frustrating to spend hours trying to solve a problem that has come up in our business through circumstances that we have absolutely zero control over. This stuff causes sleepless nights, anxiety-ridden mornings, and impossible decisions to solve so that everyone will be happy and has caused more than one business leader to feel the urge to drive their fist through a wall.

You can’t move forward without looking back to see where you’ve been.

The lessons that history teaches us are vital. As my team and I look back while simultaneously looking forward, one word keeps rising to the top of our minds.

ADAPTABILITY.

The ability to thrive through changes we can’t control goes down to basic survival instincts. Let’s look to the animal kingdom for a bit of inspiration … Chameleons are amazing little creatures, and I was surprised at some of the parallels we can draw between these animals and building a business that can survive the ups and downs of significant change.

One interesting thing about chameleons is that they cannot generate their own body heat, so the ability to change the colour of their skin is how these cute little creatures maintain favourable body temperatures.

A widespread misconception is that the reason chameleons change colours is to camouflage themselves to whatever their current surroundings are, when in fact, the most common reason to change colour is to help regulate their body temperature — or to communicate with other chameleons.

The outer layer of their skin actually has no colour at all, making it completely transparent. Beneath the transparent layer of skin are several more layers containing chromatophores, filled with sacs of different kinds of pigment. Typically, the pigments are locked away inside tiny sacs within the cells. But when a chameleon experiences changes in body temperature or mood, its nervous system tells specific chromatophores to expand or contract. This changes the colour of the cell.

By varying the activity of the different layers, the chameleon can produce various colours and patterns. Incredibly, these creatures are built to thrive from the outside in.

My point is that no matter what temperature changes this creature must adapt to or what circumstances it may face, it is prepared to adapt while, at its heart, they never become anything different than what they are. No matter what colour changes they go through daily, they remain precisely who they are at the core — chameleons.

Comparing anything to chameleons has sometimes gotten a bad rap as we associate the ability to change quickly as a sign of internal weakness or lack of commitment to remain true to who you are.

However, taking the analogy one step further, you will see that the chameleon only becomes something other than it was created to be. It simply adapts to survive and carry out its primary mission in life. 

In the business world, the “temperature,” so to speak, changes all the time.

Looking back over the last two decades, the marketplace has seen MAJOR crises and changes starting with the year 2000 and the bursting of the “technology bubble” in 2001, the September 11 terrorist attacks, and the 2002 Stock Market Crash. And then, in 2008, we saw the biggest Ponzi scheme in history with the unravelling of Bernard Madoff, former chairman of NASDAQ, in one of the largest investment fraud schemes in Wall Street history. In short, he defrauded his investors of around $18 billion and was sentenced to 150 years in prison. From 2007 to 2009, we saw the Global Recession and the collapse of Wall Street. Then fast-forwarding to 2020, we are all sick to death of COVID-19 and the instability this crisis has brought to companies globally, killing so many smaller businesses and causing millions to lose their jobs, leaving their livelihoods in question.

There’s no question about it; being an entrepreneur in today’s day ‘n age can be scary.

So how do we do this?  How do we navigate and build new businesses to be successful or turn the tide for ones who know they must become adaptable to survive?

The key to survival lies in the business’s genetic foundations.

Has the foundation of your business been built with adaptability in mind? 

Have you considered modelling your business’s infrastructure to resemble the layers that make up the chameleon?

As mentioned earlier, the chameleon’s most outer layer of skin is transparent. And the deeper you go, the more sophisticated the process becomes so that this stunning creature can change colour as it needs to without ever becoming something other than what it was intended to be. The only reason this works is because of the deeply intelligent design behind the makeup of this animal.

Sometimes things are more complicated than we make them out to be.

Even though the concept is simple, it will take a manageable amount of heavy lifting to make even the slightest shifts and changes. What we are proposing takes an incredible amount of dedication and hard work. It can mean a complete do-over of something you spent years and money putting together. Sometimes even a total restructuring of ways that worked well but have room for improvement.

To speak plainly, stuff only works until it doesn’t. Let me repeat that practices and processes only work until they don’t anymore.

So, plan ahead for change and build adaptability into the foundation of your business. Indeed, change can be painful and frightening. Still, it can signal a time of new hope, exciting things to come and ultimately, the desired stability to outlast those that have not succeeded in anticipating the vital importance of adaptability.

To quote Brene Brown … Let’s consider these “Gifts of Imperfections.”

Our team has identified four significant ways to boost adaptability skills. I would encourage you to allow these “four horsemen” to guide you as you either build a new business or work to shift the tides of an existing business.

All of us that form my team here at Virtually Untangled are entrepreneurs in our own right. However, we spent years working crappy 9 to 5’s before that. One of the things that makes the entrepreneurial mind cringe more than almost anything is hearing the dreaded phrase, “Well, that’s the way we’ve always done it.”

Having this thought process be your guiding light is incredibly dangerous. It may take you down a road of missed opportunities because, as business leaders, it is just too damn difficult to go that far out of our comfort zone. I am not suggesting in any way that we have not learned from the past, but we definitely should! However, I would highly caution against falling into that “everything needs to remain the same” trap. One who remains the same never grows! It’s beautiful when things work out, but we must continuously think about improving things to stay sharp and on top of our game. So that would be my first recommendation, be willing to change your thought process and let go of that dreaded time trap mentality.

My next thought does not come lightly. This comes after a decade of slugging it out on my own, building a virtual business.

So here it is – force yourself to take risks. Start small and work your way up from there. Minimal progress is made without risk. And the risk is necessary to remain highly adaptable.

Certain levels of risk are enjoyable. Even fun! Most of us are born with the ability to handle certain levels of risk. However, it’s much easier to work for a corporation and advise others to be risk-takers than to employ those same techniques when your business is on the line.

There is such a thing as educated risk and calculated risk which is very different than just taking risks blindly. However, I also believe in taking risks by listening to my instincts. Listen to the market. Listen to your instincts. And once you’ve decided where the risk is that you will take, take it decisively. Give your business a measured amount of time to succeed, measure the changes observed as quantifiably as possible and decide again whether the risk was worth it. Think outside the box by eradicating the box. But with caution.

My third recommendation is to encourage those around you to be open-minded. One of the best ways to cultivate having an open mind is to encourage others to do the same. Surround yourself with a TRIBE, people willing to think creatively and develop A’s to your Q’s that keep your business highly functional and adaptable. And find an accountability partner that keeps you honest and on your toes.

My last recommendation is easier said than done … Embrace learning.

This goes hand-in-hand with my first point about changing your thought process. I am 100% certain that one cannot truly happen without the other. Charles Darwin’s words still ring very much true. “It is not the strongest of species that survives, nor the most intelligent; it is the one that is most adaptable to change.”

In Jeff Boss’s Forbes article, “14 Signs of an Adaptable Person”, he identifies the following traits of adaptable people: they experiment, see opportunities where others see failures, are resourceful, think ahead, don’t whine, talk to themselves, and don’t blame others. They also don’t claim fame, are never curious, open their minds, see systems, and stay current.  

Melissa Cory, the co-founder of the Women in Leadership Conference in Oklahoma, once said …