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What would happen in your business if one day your managers just didn\u2019t show up?\u00a0 <\/span>What would their subordinates do?\u00a0 <\/span>Well, they would probably just do what they did yesterday.\u00a0 <\/span>And if the managers still didn\u2019t show up the following day, the subordinates would just continue doing what they had done all along.\u00a0 <\/span>This could go on for quite awhile, and actually, things would probably run pretty smoothly.<\/p>\n Until something would change.<\/p>\n It might be a new technology, turnover of personnel, something different in the marketplace, or a new competitor . . . it could be a lot of things.\u00a0 <\/span>But something changes and suddenly we can\u2019t simply continue to do what we\u2019ve been doing.\u00a0 <\/span>We\u2019ve got to adapt to the change, and that\u2019s the job of management.<\/p>\n It\u2019s tempting to blame outside factors when a company doesn\u2019t perform as it should.\u00a0 <\/span>We say, \u201cIt\u2019s the economy,\u201d or \u201cIt\u2019s the high cost of energy,\u201d or \u201cIt\u2019s unfair competition from China,\u201d or we make some other excuse that our company\u2019s poor performance is somehow not our fault.\u00a0 <\/span>But it is our fault.\u00a0 <\/span>As business owners and \u00a0<\/span>managers, it\u2019s our job to anticipate, respond to, and adapt to change.\u00a0 <\/span>It\u2019s what we\u2019re paid to do.<\/p>\n If we can\u2019t compete with the Chinese on mass-produced products, maybe we change our focus to short-run, custom-made products.\u00a0 <\/span>If the high cost of energy is hurting us, we look for conservation opportunities or introduce more energy-efficient equipment or come up with a pricing strategy to pass that cost through to our customers.\u00a0 <\/span>The point is, it doesn\u2019t matter whether change-induced problems are caused by external forces or not, it\u2019s still our job as managers to solve them.<\/p>\n We can\u2019t complain that it\u2019s unfair this is happening to us and say, \u201cWoe is us.\u00a0 <\/span>We\u2019re doomed!\u201d\u00a0 <\/span>That\u2019s a recipe for going out of business.\u00a0 <\/span>We need to accept change as a constant in our business lives, acknowledge our responsibility for dealing with it, and welcome it as a challenge.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" What would happen in your business if one day your managers just didn\u2019t show up?\u00a0 What would their subordinates do?\u00a0 Well, they would probably just do what they did yesterday.\u00a0 And if the managers still didn\u2019t show up the following day, the subordinates would just continue doing what they had done all along.\u00a0 This could<\/p>\n