It’s somewhat obvious that without some resistance, there would be no strengthening and weakness would increase. This applies to our physical strength and to anything else created. Though good for us, we are uncomfortable and resent experiencing any resistance. Our natural reaction to experiencing resistance is either avoiding the situation causing it, or removing the source of resistance. Rarely do we focus on increasing our strength so the initial resistance feels less and insignificant even when it has not diminished. Perhaps we know that increasing our strength does not occur overnight, but through regular persistent practice and training.
Resistance is everywhere. In fact, from a business perspective, it is impossible for business to operate without experiencing some resistance. Resistance is as prevalent as night and day, or good and evil. By Nimroth Gwetsa, 30 June 2019.
Resistance acts against progress or motion and can be beneficial and destructive if not managed well. In business, we could see harmful or destructive resistance as anything posing a risk to or capable of retarding the success of the business. Sometimes, such hindrances are intertwined with the success of the business and are difficult to separate.
For example, big-business may be reputable and successful in its ability to handle higher volumes of transactions. But instead of the larger volume enabling the company achieve lower cost of operations owing to economies of scale, you find the company having higher operational costs owing to costs of implementing redundancy measures for the business. Knowing the significant adverse impact of failure in processing large transactions, redundancy measures put in place to ensure continuous operations would equally increase the cost of doing business. Thus, what was the company’s success equally became its hindrance to success.
The resistance I am more interested in, concerns difficulties small-businesses experience from time to time. Challenges surrounding success and are many and come from different directions, almost affecting all aspects of the business.
For example, you may have several deals you do not want to ruin, but ensure quality delivery. Naturally, you would ensure you have some highly skilled personnel in your employ to deliver on those commitments. You then find that the employment of those highly skilled staff also works against your company’s cost structure because it now places your company at the same cost-structure as that of big-business, though without big-business’ scale. This, then places your company at a disadvantage, making it less competitive. And even if margins are trimmed “to the bone”, you may find it unhelpful because the business ends up not creating sufficient reserves to cover emergencies and unforeseen disturbances.
Sometimes the issue is not about the cost structure owing to the employment of highly skilled personnel, but owing to the need to maintain the balance between managing growth and risks.
Other challenges may be that, your wish to maintain a larger buffer of competent junior and experienced staff to reduce the cost structure, may be thwarted by big-business poaching your best staff, offering them hard to resist packages small-business owners cannot easily match. And because many of these youngsters want to achieve material success quickly, they are not necessarily motivated by share of profits or some equity share for a slightly reduced, but competitive salaries. They easily find big-business offers too tempting to resist.
You may also want to ensure there is a healthy pipeline of new work to ensure staff is continuously engaged and billable, but assignments, be it active or upcoming ones, do not always end or respectively commence on time and as expected. This creates an assignment “gap” which, if prolonged, could pose a risk to the business.
Though every business should maintain some level of workforce redundancy or oversupply to mitigate the risk of attrition, poor health or any other staff unavailability which may hinder successful and timely completion of assignments, small-businesses cannot afford to have persistent staff overcapacity. Higher productivity levels should be maintained while ensuring the well-being of staff, burnout being the most destructive.
But these challenges can be seen as “nice” problems to have, the worst being about the battle to secure billable assignments for ensuring business success and sustainability. Many small-businesses do not need funding, but opportunities to earn income that can be invested in the business to ensure its expansion and profitability.
Finding and securing lucrative and longer-term opportunities in our difficult economic climate is akin to “finding a needle in a haystack”. Even shorter assignments are proving more challenging mainly owing to finding big-businesses also competing with small-businesses for low-value assignments. In their desperation to secure a deal, however small, big-business readily undercuts prices, perhaps hoping to “kill” emerging competition so they could be the “last man standing”, so they could later use their “monopoly” to revert to their normal, higher prices.
Perhaps, the issue is far from this simple explanation, but that big-business too, are “feeling the pinch”, and would do anything to preserve their sustainability, hence their competing with small-businesses on price. The idea, in this case, being to use pricing as their entry to a deal, with the aim of motivating for an increase in the scope of the assignment later, so the initial “loss” in revenue can be made up through subsequent phases of the assignment.
Small-businesses have to find it in themselves to increase their strength, as they do not have the luxury of wishing away problems or easily dismissing them.
Ironically, when big-business faces serious challenges threatening their profitability, they often call for government intervention, such as asking for (increased) tariffs, or subsidies or any of other protection they see fit. Yet, small-businesses are almost left without state intervention. Often, it is big-business acting with “impunity” causing the demise of small-businesses through their predatory activities. At the moment, there’s no point, really, for small-businesses crying foul. Theirs is to fight and find ways of strengthening themselves against such challenges.
There’s an adage, saying, “What does not kill you, makes you strong”. But the strength small-businesses need may not come from own efforts alone. To fight a giant, small-businesses may not need to rely on their strength or ingenuity alone, but to fight in a pack, as wolves do. Collaborating with aligned and supplementary businesses may be one of the effective ways of overcoming the onslaught from big-businesses.
Small-businesses often miss the opportunity to succeed because owners want to own and control every aspect of the business, without considering sharing or rendering some aspect of the business to better-suited parties. It’s unwise risking liquidation than considering selling some equity in the business to other suitably qualified parties who might bring fresh ideas to revive it.
As there will always be different challenges affecting small-businesses, owners should make it a habit to find ways of strengthening their capacity to handle such difficulties than fighting to “kill” the challenge. Increasing strength elevates the level of operations and naturally results in the growth of the business.
Thus, it would be in the interest of small-business owners to see resistance as an opportunity for business growth. Every resistance, even the challenge to convert a sale, is an opportunity for ensuring business growth.
Do your best to improve your chances of success, including going back to basics, selling small or increasing your network of helpful and influential contacts. Do not waste your valuable time on whingers, envious people or those only interested in assessing your progress so you could spur them to work harder to achieve more for themselves.
Focus on your business and learn to welcome resistance in your life for your own progression.