Don't Let Flat Be Your New Up.

It seems like you can't open a magazine or newspaper that has a business related topic without seeing “flat is the new up”.  It seems like the catchphrase of the current economy.  The first time I heard it last year I was saddened to think this is the new standard.  Our business grew 8% in an industry that was shrinking over 70%.  How did you do.  

I have to admit the only reason we grew was due to the failure of major competitors.  Last year in the audio video industry, we lost Tweeter and Circuit City.  In our markets, this represented a major loss of the ability to deliver consumer electronics.  In truth, I shouldn't be proud, although we only grew 8%, while losing two companies each did three times our business in the same general area.  We clearly weren't as effective.

We couldn't do any more work last year than we did.  What we got was all the business we were prepared to take.  We might have been able to take more if we hired people, added extra training and had been prepared for the mass exodus from the market.  As a vendor after vendor came into our offices and told us being up 8% was bragging, we lowered our sights.  We shot for a much lower target because that is what the market expected.  Last year that's what we expected.  Let face it, 2009 was no fun.

There really is a huge mistake to compare yourself to anybody else.  Market forces will always have a factor in our business, and everyone's business.  Sometimes, we are lucky and the market will carry us.  Other times, we will have to work harder because the market is fighting us.  In the worst-case your market goes away, and you have two choices.  The first choice is to close.  This is the easiest and quickest way out of a failed market.  Imagine being a carriage maker when Henry Ford invented the assembly line.  Cars are flying out the door and you are trying to hand carve wheels for your carriage.  We all know where that market went.  What about typewriters?  Markets change, it can happen in any market at any time. 

The second choice we have is to adapt find a new market, re-train our business and move in a new direction.  There's a little company that very few people know about, and I don't even know its current name.  It was once called Wil-Tel.  Wil-Tel originally started out laying pipeline for oil and gas companies.  It laid so much pipe that when the interstate system was complete and trucks ended up being used to deliver fuel cheaply, they were stuck with thousands of miles of empty pipe.  Wil-Tel adapted and began filling their pipe with copper lines for the new telephone company.  The last I heard of them, they were stuffing the same pipes with fiber optics.  That's adapting to the new market twice.

As we all go out into our business, our office job or whatever it is we do everyday, we have a choice.  We can adapt to continuously changing world, or give up.  If we sit and do the same thing without growing or training that really isn't any different than giving up slowly.  The Japanese call this continuous process of adaption kaizen.  Darwin called it survival.  The word kaizen simply means improvement.  Continuous is implied in the process and interpretation.  Toyota Motor Co. is famous for pushing assembly lines until they break, finding what broke them and fixing it.  By default, this process will become kaizen.

In a world economy where flat is the new up, what can you do to adapt set yourself apart, and really look up.  After all flat is boring.  So as you look up and aim high.  Think about how you can improve your business or your job to meet the demands of the new economy.  What can you do today that will yield results, one year, two years or even five years down the road.  

The market is there, we just have to reach for it.  For the full disclosure information, we have completely shifted our business, and it looks nothing like it did two years ago.  Sit down with your people, look at what your strengths are, and what you can do to grow your business or improve your office.  Don't let flat be the new up, go figure out what it is that you can do and what the market needs.  Find where the two intersect and you have a winner.

Scott Bourquin