Jason Kulpa Discusses Assessing Change Impact in Disruptive Times
Every business will experience change at some point. While slow change over time is a standard part of a growing business, entrepreneur Jason Kulpa explains the significant, sometimes abrupt changes that come during disruptive times can ultimately define a business’ long-term success.
If companies want to be successful, leaders need to be able to respond quickly to rapidly-changing conditions. You’ll be able to pivot quickly if you’re proactive in assessing the changes and how they affect your business.
If you find your business experiencing change during disruptive times, here is a straightforward process of how you can evaluate change impact.
Heed Warning Signs
Many businesses aren’t able to identify disruptions until they’re well underway. This makes it very challenging to respond to change effectively.
While tracking and analyzing data is important — as we’ll soon talk about — you need to be able to understand the warning signs of disruption and heed them. But, you won’t be able to do that if you don’t even understand the warning signs.
An excellent way to identify the warning signs of disruption is to study the past. Even if you’re a newer business, you can analyze historical data. For example, you can study what others in your industry did the last time they went through disruptive times.
Shift to Real-Time Analytics
Most businesses utilize data to assess how the company is performing, identify outlying situations and understand why change might be taking place. Then, they implement changes they feel are necessary and track the results over time to see if they are effective.
That might be good enough during normal periods of change, but that approach only exacerbates problems in disruptive times. Instead, businesses need to shift to real-time data collection and analysis.
Identifying the root causes of problems as they are happening, making changes to address them, and then tracking the effectiveness of those changes as they’re being implemented is critical.
Luckily, there are many technological tools that can help businesses do this today.
Get the Team on the Same Page
One of the biggest downfalls for companies is a simple lack of communication. It’s not a lack of talent, knowledge, or even a lack of resources — financial or otherwise. It’s simply that the team didn’t communicate well and wasn’t on the same page.
A successful business takes all stakeholders working in the same direction simultaneously. That’s only possible, though, if clear lines of communication are established and if you communicate regularly.
This is necessary for even “normal” times but is especially crucial during disruptive times. Suppose you don’t already have these lines of communication and regular interactions in place as an ingrained part of your company before the disruption occurs. In that case, you’ll always be playing catch-up.
During times of disruption, you also may need to change the frequency of your communication or even how it’s done. For example, instead of communicating via messenger programs once a week, you may need a daily video conference—the more communication, the better during disruptive times.
Study What Others Are Doing
When disruption occurs, your business won’t be the only one affected. As Jason Kulpa says, it’s always a good idea to study what your competition is doing to respond to this disruption. While you may not want to replicate everything they’re doing, there might be some valuable lessons you can glean from their response. You should always be studying your competition, borrowing from what they do well — and what fits your model — and avoiding what they do poorly — or what doesn’t fit your model.
About Jason Kulpa
Jason Kulpa is a serial entrepreneur and the Founder and CEO of UE.co, San Diego’s Fastest Growing Business multi-year award winner, and a Certified Great Place to Work multi-year winner. Jason Kulpa is a San Diego‘s two-time winner of the Most Admired CEO Award of the San Diego Business Journal and also a semi-finalist for the Ernst and Young Entrepreneur award. Under Mr. Kulpa’s leadership, in 2018, his teams volunteered at over 24 events and worked side-by-side to improve the San Diego community. They hosted a gala dinner benefiting individuals with autism, cheered on Special Olympic athletes as they broke their records on the track, and brought school supplies and cold-weather gear to students impacted by homelessness. Jason’s mission is to bring awareness, support, and inclusion for special needs causes.