The Signals of Change
You’ve embraced the opportunity that could alter how your company is valued. You’ve initiated a change program to re-position your company to win. What steps can you take to powerfully signal to the marketplace that something is indeed different?
Here are some actions that will signal change. All of them, by the way, are completely in your control:
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Install new leadership in the executive suite – especially in the areas of product, sales, or marketing
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Introduce either a new or drastically improved product
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Sign up an impressive list of partners – be they on the product or distribution side
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Commission a breakthrough industry study
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Publish the results of that study in a provocative point-of-view that challenges conventional notions
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Streamline and simplify your pricing, contracts and service
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Market the company more purposefully with a compelling voice and an engaging image
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Train your sales force to sell based on value not features, function or price
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Become more visible by participating in important industry venues – live and virtual – as a speaker, panelist, writer, and contributor
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Line up select customers, analysts and pundits to talk about the positive changes taking place at your company
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Identify a media channel that is intrigued by your moves
Each of these types of actions is a positive step forward. Be mindful, however, that no individual activity will be enough to drive the kind of sustainable change necessary to redefine your company. Sustainable change is only possible when you package together this collection of change activities in a purposeful, carefully managed way. Then and only then will the feint signals of change be loud enough to hear.
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Doing the things that signal change are necessary first steps. What comes next will determine if those signals are authentic representations of a changed entity … or not. What do you suppose that is?