Don’t let complacency kill your business

Don’t let complacency kill your business

Don’t let complacency kill your business

Complacency is a killer in any business. I’ve seen it happen, time and again.

I saw it happen to one of my clients.

One company hired me because they wanted help with their CEO. They said he wasn’t proactive enough.

There was a lack of innovation in the business, and the board laid the blame on the CEO. They weren’t offering anything that would stop people from going to the competition.

So, I started working with the CEO.

In a pretty short period, we got the company’s prices back up. It started making money again.

It sounds like the board got everything they wanted, right?

But that’s not the end of the story.

Not long after I left the company, their results started dropping again. Their old habits of procrastination returned. They lost the momentum they’d just built.

The client called me back in.

This time, I could sense some resentment and aggression from the board. I had the feeling that they blamed me for the company losing its direction again.

So, I confronted the board. I asked them what they really thought about the CEO. I wanted answers.

They told me about how he seemed to have become complacent. They talked about a lack of urgency. They felt frustrated about not getting a return on their investment because of the CEO.

And as it turns out, they’d felt that way for years.

They’d never said anything before, because the business was still making money. They had happy customers. On the surface, everything looked pretty good. 

But underneath, there was this overriding sense of complacency – which they traced back to the CEO.

And complacency is a dangerous thing to have in a business.

Complacency makes you stick with the status quo. That’s dangerous, because the marketplace is always changing around you. 

It’s complacency that stopped Blockbuster from adapting to the video streaming model. It kept Kodak from becoming the frontrunner in digital photography.

Complacency could stop your business from achieving success in the future.

Even if you’re successful now.

You can tackle complacency before it takes root in your business.

Schedule a call at https://meetings.hubspot.com/david1290

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