Embracing Uncertainty: 5 Ways Successful Businesses Turn Risks into Opportunities

Running a business in Colorado is so much more than maintaining expectations and ensuring smooth day-to-day operations. You should always be looking to take your business to the next level, promoting both steady and swift growth to exceed your goals and elevate your brand.

Even when it gets difficult to envision the future of your business, there is always a way to turn a heavy risk into a profitable reward. We’ll review the best ways to boost innovation and growth within your business despite prevalent risks and uncertainties.

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Utilizing adaptive strategies for business growth

Adaptive strategies are methods of holding the reins and steering your business in the direction of growth when economic or other business-related factors are shifting, causing uncertainty. As a business owner, you should always be aware of market and industry changes while looking for ways to take advantage of the shift. Developing quick solutions and having contingencies in place to prepare for potential failure, obstacles or fallout are key to creating a work environment that encourages innovation.

The best way to use adaptive strategies to your advantage is by creating visual plans to catalyze physical change. Using tools like flow charts with shapes and directional indicators is a great way of establishing cohesive and coherent plans amongst your team. These visual aids are simple to translate, easy to adjust and create a sense of organization that can alleviate stress and promote productivity.

Effective decision-making strategies in uncertain times

As a leader, it is important to be able to make crucial, often difficult decisions, even when you aren’t positive about the results. Here are a few tips for making the best decisions when the path to success isn’t so clear.

1. Perform annual risk assessments

Annual risk assessments are necessary for the overall health of a company. You should assess all risks and figure out which ones are the most important to attend to, responding to them with assistance from your staff and legal team.

For example, if you plan on implementing artificial intelligence chatbots for online customer service, you should consider the security risks, as well as a potential negative consumer response, coming up with different ways to address these concerns while performing active harm reduction.

READ: AI for Customer Service — 5 Easy Ways to Help Your Customers

2. Examine other businesses

Staying on top of your competitors’ progress and plans is just another form of risk assessment and market research. Look at the direction of successful companies in your industry. Crocs, for example, originated in Boulder, CO in 2002 as a very simple boating clog. These shoes were not always met with the obsessive admiration from the younger consumer market as they are today. 

However, over 10 years later, Crocs began to notice a shift in their consumer base — college-aged students began to gravitate toward the shoe, wearing them as a practical, slip-on solution for sports practices, work and everyday casual wear.

Crocs took a risk and capitalized on this shift, modernizing their shoes with silicone charm accessories and collaborating with well-known designers like Balenciaga. What was once cringe had now become cool with a deep understanding of their changing market. By examining businesses that have taken profitable risks like this, you can implement similar strategies in your own company to achieve massive success.

3. Plan strategically

Strategic planning is the best way to catapult your Colorado business into unparalleled growth. Continuously brainstorming ways to address rising uncertainties and providing multiple solutions for various scenarios will save you from scrambling in the end.

Much like playing a card game, strategic planning involves reading your competitor’s next move and taking a risk according to your analysis of where and when the risk will lie in your favor. It also involves understanding when to bluff and hold, and when to become fully transparent about your business’s progress and what you can offer, even if it may disappoint your consumer base temporarily.

4. Stay informed about technological developments

There is no greater risk to your business in the digital age than falling behind technologically. Staying ahead of trends and developments and integrating tech into your business accordingly not only amplifies security within your business, it shows your customers you are taking every initiative to ensure a comfortable, modern experience for them.

READ: Top 5 Tech Tools Every Hybrid Team Needs for Effective Collaboration 

5. Refine consumer relationships

Ultimately, you should always aim to develop a connection with your consumers to provide more efficient services and to get ahead of potential risks. One way to enhance this relationship and address concerns is to provide an option for customer feedback and a visible implementation of this feedback.

Offer a hotline or a digital form to fill out, and provide either thoughtful personal responses or public posts relaying ways you plan to include these thoughts into your business operations, either through social media or a routine email newsletter.

Indiana Lee is a writer, reader, and jigsaw puzzle enthusiast from the Pacific Northwest. An expert on business operations, leadership, marketing, and lifestyle, you can connect with her on LinkedIn.