FEATURED POST OF THE WEEK

Our long-form article of the week. You can always view the current and past featured posts on Empower’s blog.

Change is constant. You can control how you manage it.

Change is inevitable in all areas of life, including business. Certain changes you can control, and others you can’t. For example, you can control the new leader you choose to drive internal change. You don’t necessarily have a say in how markets shift, consumer preferences evolve or how technology advances.

While lacking total control can feel destabilizing, it’s important to recognize that you can influence how you and your team adapt to change. As a leader, that’s where you should focus your energy. Your effectiveness in this can also make a difference in how your business operates through significant disruption.

What is change management?

Often in the corporate world, you’ll hear this referred to as “change management.” Change management is a structured approach to transitioning individuals, teams and organizations from their current state to a desired future state. The process involves preparing, managing and reinforcing changes within a company to achieve specific goals.

While corporate jargon can feel excessive and overcomplicated for small businesses and startups, the idea of being equipped to stay strong through change is relevant no matter the size or stage. Imagine you’re a one-person team making high-end custom chairs, and your key supplier suddenly goes out of business. If you’ve planned for disruptions like this you can pivot quickly with backup suppliers.

In other words, “change management” and contingency planning aren’t just reserved for large corporations. You can build best practices into a small business to better ensure adaptability when change comes knocking on your door.

How change management impacts business performance

Businesses typically need to adapt every two to five years, creating a natural rhythm of change.

Investing upfront in planning can lead to a range of positive benefits for your business in the short and long term.

• Overall operations: Building frameworks for addressing change and disruption can help maintain daily business performance.

• Risk Mitigation: When you plan for change, you have more time to think critically about navigating smooth transitions and building contingency plans to reduce bumps along the road.

• Resilience: Businesses that build muscle around change management will strengthen their durability and be better positioned to handle future challenges.

• Employee Satisfaction: When you show your team that you care about their experience, they’ll notice. Focusing on how change impacts your employees will build more trust, loyalty and increase morale.

• Customer satisfaction: Changes in your business can impact your customers, too. You can reduce the effect on the customer experience with thoughtful planning.

Eight tactics for managing change

The benefits of preparing for change are clear. Don’t stress about planning for every possible scenario — that’s not realistic. What’s important is acknowledging change and committing to managing it.

Here are eight tips to guide you:

• Communicate early: Communicate change to the right stakeholders early and often. The sooner you do, the more comfortable people will get with what’s coming, ask questions and prepare.

• Be transparent: Explain the “why” behind the change and don’t mislead stakeholders. While you might not have all the details upfront, avoid sugarcoating.

• Gain champions: Seek input from your team to gain support for the direction you’re steering the ship. You’ll gain champions who can help break down resistance from others.

• Provide support: Give your people the tools they need to feel supported and able to succeed.

• Set clear goals and expectations: Be specific about the intended outcomes, outline your expectations and establish metrics for success so everyone can visualize and contribute to performance.

• Proactively address concerns: Acknowledge change is unsettling and that you’re all in this together. Address objections and provide appropriate reassurance.

• Celebrate wins: Recognize milestones and celebrate accomplishments to show progress and keep morale high.

• Remain flexible: Be open to feedback and be prepared to adjust plans when necessary. This can lead to better outcomes.

Now that you understand you can’t control change but can master how you manage it, what action will you take to position your business for success?

WEEKLY DOSE OF EMPOWERMENT

The weekly dose of Empowerment is meant to provide one weekly tip that’s both practical and approachable, to help drive incremental improvement to your day-to-day. We’re always open to your contributions as well. If you would like to submit a tip to be shared with the Empower community in a future newsletter, please reach out at [email protected] with the subject line “Weekly Dose of Empowerment Submission.”

How to translate your strategy into messaging

If you’ve been following this newsletter from the beginning, you’ll know by now that I’m a fan of the Basic Arts newsletter by Alex Smith. This week I’m borrowing from Smith, who shared a simple framework for turning strategy into effective messaging — an important tool for every business.

Smith’s framework for effective messaging

Step 1 - Strategy:

Define the unique value your business offers and what makes it stand out.

Step 2 - Messaging structure:

All good messaging consists of similar components:

• The customer problem

• The company solution

• The customer benefit

With your strategy and these three components, you can begin to form an effective script to convey what you’re doing and why people should care.

Step 3 - Creative overlay:

Once you’ve developed the core message, consider adding a creative element. Not every business will need this, but it can elevate your messaging when done well.

Smith used Apple’s “Think Different” campaign as an example of a strong creative overlay that reinforced the company’s message.

I’ve only highlighted the key points from Smith’s longer piece. For a deeper dive, you can read the complete write-up here.

JESSICA’S READ, OR LISTEN, PICK OF THE WEEK

A little something that got my gears turning this week and might pique your interest as well!

From TotalRetail: Retail Small Businesses Are Closing Across the Country; the Survivors Have One Thing in Common

TL;DR

Last month, TotalRetail published an article about small businesses closing across the country that got my attention. Since I’ve made it my focus to identify ways to help more emerging businesses succeed, hopefully, that’s not a surprise.

In short, the article highlights that we’re on pace for the highest rate of small business bankruptcies since 2020, and small retail has been particularly impacted. It also implies that to survive, owners must focus on strategic planning and use an asset that small teams have as an advantage — the ability to be more agile and responsive to market dynamics compared to their big-box competitors.

Read the full article for tips they provided to small retailers to navigate this challenging market.

JUST FOR FUN

Really, this section is just for fun. Who knows what will be in store each week?

This week’s fun is a shoutout to Maddie Adams’ recently launched newsletter: Mom Dog

Maddie Adams is the founder of Smudgepot, a content marketing business, and, among other things, is also the author of this new(ish) newsletter. I got to know Maddie earlier this year as her client. She helped develop the voice and messaging behind Empower and bring my vision into words. She’s also become a friend.

With Mom Dog, she keeps things, fun and relatable, like her ode to the chili crisp condiment or her “rant” on toddler birthdays. If you want a quick read for the weekend, read just one edition. If it tickles your fancy, subscribe to keep it coming.

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If you’re ready to take the step, reach out to discuss how we can support your goals. 

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