A MACROVIEW
Listening to your customers is one step, but it won’t give you the big picture. For that you need a macro view. You need to know what is happening in your industry, what is happening to the industries connected to your industry, and which potential companies have the ability to get a pieceof your industry. You also need time to step back and consider whether your industry is still doing things in a way that makes sense.
On the whole, small businesses are lousy at seeing the macro view. We become so myopically focused on our internal operations that we don’t take the time to regularly consider the important fundamental shifts taking place in the general marketplace.
Some markets are just dying. They’re not going to come back, at least in their current form. If you are in one of them now, there are only two paths to follow. You can both stick it out and be the last one standing, or you can find a way to use your assets, skills, and people for new opportunities. Those who don’t see their own extinction coming are going to be blindsided and could lose everything.
Tower Records should not have been surprised when the company started to slide toward bankruptcy. After all, the company’s whole appeal was that its stores had a wider selection of music than anyone else. But if I can buy every CD there is from my computer chair, sampling any of them before buying, what does that do to Tower’s reason for being? I’m not trying to pick on Tower Records because any of us can be made irrelevant at any time by someone who has found a good way to do what we’re doing cheaper, faster, better, or all three.
