Businesspeople, be it entrepreneurs or executives, need to be able to adapt.
According to Wikipedia, adaptation falls under one of three types:
Structural adaptations are special body parts of an organism that help it to survive in its natural habitat (e.g., skin color, shape, body covering). Behavioural adaptations are special ways a particular organism behaves to survive in its natural habitat. Physiological adaptations are systems present in an organism that allow it to perform certain biochemical reactions (e.g., making venom, secreting slime, being able to keep a constant body temperature).
I’ve certainly had to adapt due to some slimy people’s venomous actions… so I find it ironic to read that. In the scope of business, I’d lump adaption under a couple of scenarios.
Internal Adaptation
One is taking your former experiences and adapting to your new settings. Many people experience one success but then have a hard time adapting to anything else. You have to internalize the success (or failure, in fact) and see what parts or elements of that you need to take away with you, and what is irrelevant to future opportunities. I call this internal adaptation because - from the perspective of the next great challenge - you have to look to within and find it inside of you to change.
You know what they say, you cannot teach an old dog new tricks.
One personal experience of mine was taking all of the lessons, learnings and what not from my days working in the online text publishing business and adapting those to the world of video publishing, which is very different (and anyone with the most basic understanding of anything would know, by the way). In all honesty, there are a few tactical mistakes I did this past year due to not adapting enough, or realizing that some trends would accelerate enough or not. But in the broader context, I certainly am very proud of how I saw some trends and opportunities shift and accelerate, which explains our position of leadership in video at WatchMojo.com, for example.
External Adaptation
The second form of adaptation is being able to adapt your own gameplan and strategy as you move ahead in life, by considering the realities, rules of engagement and shifting variables. Everyone develops a gameplan because they have some strengths, they realize they might have weaknesses, they see opportunities and want their gameplan to counter threats. This is the good old fashion MBA SWOT analysis that is good useful and useless. But the point is that once your gameplan is developed over a given SWOT, you then need to make changes to it as the terms of engagement and playing ground evolve.
Nothing is constant. Even the most mature industries are in constant flux. Since in this case you are evolving as a result of externalities, I call this one external adaptation.
Entrepreneur vs. Executive
I hate it when some “thinkers” or “analysts” lump everyone under one or the other, but it could be argued that most entrepreneurs are very good at external adaptation. They see something and simply work at it until they succeed. Some are better than others at adapting (external adaptation) but the ones who do so well tend to become very successful.
In the context of internal adaptation, I have seen that short of successful serial entrepreneurs, it is hard for many young entrepreneurs to keep the hits coming. Some suffer from burnout, others are too cast in their old ways. Successful serial entrepreneurs are the exception to the rule, in my humble opinion.
Executives, successful ones at least, tend to be better at internal adaptation. They have worked in one or many industries, held various jobs and they tend to be able to come in and internalize what they learned at previous gigs and help a company grow. I have met many of these older, wiser folks in my life and it’s a pleasure to be around them. They are seasoned, pure and simple.
A few of these tend to be able to adapt to new situations in their new positions (external adaptation) but believe it or not, if you take a look at many nightmare case studies in magazines or in your own circle, you will see that a lot of executives cannot change the game plan once things change too much and they fall out of their comfort zone. One high profile case is Dell’s Michael Rollins. He came in experienced and all and applies his know-how to Dell when Dell was in the same position of leadership, but then when Dell lost its way, he was not able to manage it. Of course, Dell’s problems are far deeper than one man, but you get the idea.
Exceptions to the Rule?
As you can imagine, there are always exceptions to the rule. As a 28 year old “business guy” on this third startup and first company I’ve founded, I am not sure if I am more of one or the other.
I certainly saw some things in the marketplace that led me to drop investment banking career aspirations and launch into the Web (first in the search engine space in January 2000, then in the men’s publishing space in September, 2000) and adapted each time (internal adaptation).
I also saw some things that led me to take the greatest risk of my life last year by launching this company, and in doing so, I’ve certainly had to fine-tune some things along the way, or as Steve Case would say, “change the jet’s engine as we flew at 30,000 feet.” On this point, I cannot stress this enough, once you start to get on the right path as a business, entrepreneur and executive (in this case all three), you need to pause, take a step back, detach yourself from what you are building and see the forest through the trees.
I’d say the secret to adapting successfully is not pretending to know the score of the game before the game’s been played out.
Once you do all of this, you realize just how grand the game can be, and you find yourself in the position to win, and win big.
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