Significance over Success. Innovation over Change. Anticipation over Agility.

Question for all who read this: to succeed at any business venture, you merely need to have huge resources, dedicated personnel, and a quality product or service, right? From there, it’s just collecting money and living a good life.

This presumption is more common than you realize, and could not be more wrong and misguided. In a world where exponential change and digital disruptions abound, you simply cannot rest on your laurels and merely rely on what you’ve already built. Because of the rapidly accelerating rate of change, your business is only ever as strong as its next innovation.

The goal should be longevity and significance over success, not merely one big payout and coasting down a hill, using reactionary mindsets and agility as needed to dodge obstacles while you coast. So if this aforementioned mindset is not the key to a successful and, more important, significant business, what is?

An Anticipatory mindset is the answer.

Fear and Caution Will Stifle Innovation

Before you successfully implement a more proactive mindset of anticipation as a way to continuously innovate, gaining a better understanding of something that affects everyone in business and life is paramount: fear.

While many companies organize themselves to successfully have breakthroughs in innovation, staying ahead of disruption and change in the process, others are failing to accomplish the same because of fear or even an unnecessary overabundance of caution. Fear is generated by the unknown: the future riddled with risk that we seemingly feel is completely uncertain and dangerous. Instinctually for many, we choose to play it safe and protect and defend the status quo with agility.

However, understanding and accepting that the concept of fear is in everyone helps in shifting your team’s mindset to one of anticipation and, ultimately, abundance. Exponential change brought on by both digital disruptions and changes in the world around us make abundance a reality. Change being the only constant means not only that your business processes and products will need to change, but also that you have longevity in business in the future!