Why Telling Businesspeople to “Embrace Change” is Meaningless

The central process that businesspeople use to navigate the marketplace is planning. Too often there is a regular admonition about the inability of printing businesses to plan, but nonetheless they manage to survive and outlast the seminar programs about planning and the people who admonish them. Planning in small businesses tends to be more culturally-based and transmitted by actions, not by documents. The issue becomes whether or not that culture can detect changes in its customer prospect base and its overall market, and profitably adapt. It’s not whether or not it embraces change. Planning is a process by which we prepare for anticipated changes to our businesses, customers, competitors, and the marketplace. This is why it’s so important to conduct the planning process effectively.