Building Sustainable Business for Next Decade!

Human race entered in a new decade with the start of new year 2021 with some unforgettable memories of 2020. While, last year taught us some of life’s critical lessons of survival & growth, this new decade is actually meant to take forward those learnings in building a better sustainable ecosystem for ourselves & future generations. Last 5 years have been about radical changes in the form of technological breakthrough, business models disruption leading to unexpected mergers / acquisitions, political reforms & uncertainties beyond human control causing severe impact to our personal, professional & social life. All these incidents have left us to revisit our purpose of existence & think beyond our life monotony.

The wave of digital transformation has significantly impacted human life by redefining new ways of communication & engagement. This wave of change is continuously progressing at an unprecedented pace while forcing us to challenge the status quo & enabling us in laying the foundation of our future survival. People across the planet are becoming more aware about themselves & their ecosystem which is causing a shift in the individual priorities. Both startups & established businesses are sailing through the common challenge of navigating the fear of disruption & sustaining their existence.

As per Accenture study, more than 80% of industry sectors have been going through disruption with more than $40 trillion in enterprise value exposed to disruption. The event of disruption is not a short-term phenomenon but is an ongoing battle to be fought with patience & persistence.

In order to survive this wave of change, businesses need to ‘’align their purpose with changing individual priorities’’ by revisiting their operating fundamentals & being courageous to prepare for radical disruption of their business models.

Following are a few key points that would help startups & businesses in achieving future sustainability.

1.    Transitioning from Transactional to Engagement Models: The first step in this direction for businesses would be a transition from transactional to engagement model. The need is to think beyond jargons (like top & bottom line, funnel etc.) and focus on designing strategies & engagement models making customers an integral part of the overall business growth journey.

2.    Customer’s Experience over Customer Experience: Yes, a single alphabet is enough to change the game. Businesses often neglect the customer’s experience while blindly focusing on delivering customer experience. Designing products / services which are aligned around customer’s experience would help in quickly connecting with them via an outstanding experience leaving a long-lasting positive impact thereby earning a loyal market share.

3.    Selling Solutions over Product / Service: People spend on solutions and not on commodity. Delivering a product helps earn money, but delivering a solution help earn a customer. Customers often prefer to put their bet on something which is capable of solving their real-life problems irrespective of price tag or maintenance efforts. Businesses should focus on delivering solutions which solve practical problems & not mere a product of mass adoption.

4.    Building Culture of Equity & Equality: Employee first is another important aspect of business sustainability. The workplace of future is evolving as employees are becoming more aware about themselves leading to a change in their life & career priorities. Many established businesses & late-stage startups have been following the conventional approach of overwork, underpaid, constant bullying & micromanagement. It is critical for businesses to retain high performing & loyal employees by promoting a culture of equality at work by offering adequate trust, autonomy & equity. This will empower employees thereby building a sense of responsibility & healthy competitive spirit to perform & deliver beyond expectations.

5.    Purpose Over Prosperity: Businesses with longer run rate have stronger alignment to their fundamental purpose, while prosperity being a derivative. An ethics & integrity driven business will have a stronger foundation capable of earning market trust & successfully navigate unprecedented times over prosperity driven business.

6.    Deliver Value over Features: Products / services that offer value for money invested have much higher probability of earning a customer over something which lacks value but loaded with features incapable of delivering any tangible value. This is the reason why most products get scrapped soon after getting launched.  Businesses need to revisit their product research fundamentals to gain precise insights around consumer expectations to build value driven products / services. The best way to do this is to seek feedback directly from your customers & critics instead of solely relying on external / outsourced insights.

7.    Community & Collaboration: As they say, if you want to win a marathon, run together. Communities are another way of constant engagement with customers to understand their needs & refining the business offerings. There is a need to adopt forward thinking approach by being open to collaborate with anybody irrespective of size & scale. Thinking beyond conventional acquisition approach & fostering a partnership driven model would help achieve innovation & agility at scale with quick turnarounds.

8.    Circular Economy & Green Energy: Environment plays a crucial role in business sustainability. To survive longer, an immediate need is to make significant efforts in reducing carbon footprint, recycling & promoting clean energy resources for running operations & supply chain. While initial impact on capital expenses might be high but long-term results would definitely surpass the initial impact & yield greater benefits.

Whether you are a startup or an established business, no amount of technology or strategy could help sustain a business until the right fundamentals of engaging with humans are set in place. Building a sustainable business is like running a marathon. It doesn’t matter how much time it takes to reach the success milestone, but the journey to success should be highly satisfying that inspires others to follow the trail & build something even bigger & better to make the planet further smarter & more sustainable.

Views are personal, thoughts are welcome!