Understanding external change – video transcript

In this video Understanding external change, learn how react to changes happening in the world around your business.

Four. Understanding external change.

Whether you're planning a global business or a local start up, it's important to know there are things you can and can't control.

It can help to think of external factors as market trends. While trends themselves are often out of your control, your ability to understand trends and how they could affect your business is not.

The challenge is to use trends to your advantage by learning to anticipate and quickly respond to them.

To understand the concept of external change, let's go back to our simple example of Penny's lemonade stand.

For Penny, winter is coming and the lemonade stand is not doing as well as it used to.

Some changes you make might fail, but some will succeed. It's your job to adjust and develop your business according to what's happening around you.

New ideas won't always work, so introduce changes on a small scale as quickly and as cost effectively as possible before you commit to larger, more expensive changes.

When it comes to understanding external change, use the context map canvas to help you and your team expand your thinking beyond your current products and services.

For Penny, the economic and environmental realities are clear. With winter coming, there's less foot traffic and customers prefer to stay indoors.

Looking at technology trends, we see that the demand for lemonade has shifted to buying online. Customers want the convenience of making their own lemonade at home.

Penny's lemon tree is also extremely low in fruit. Penny doesn't know whether the tree will be able to supply enough lemons in the future.

She needs to think about these external factors if she wants to continue selling lemonade.

The context map canvas will help you identify what's going on in the world and what's changing that will affect your business today and in the future.

It will help you understand the impact of external change both in opportunities and threats.

Download the tool and think about external factors that might affect your business. Discuss this with your team or friends or family who understand your business.

Watch the video Understanding external change.