Change, as they say, is the only constant. While it’s true in every sphere of life, it’s truer in the case of a business. A change in customer preference, a minor tweak in the regulatory environment, a new substitute product or even an efficient employee’s departure (especially in a small business) may create an insurmountable challenge for an entrepreneur. Running a business means a process of continuous adaptation to deal with changes and changing one’s ways accordingly.

The adaptation factor could be reactive or active or a mix of both. Those who are adept at both survive the most. Let us look into what is involved here. Take the case of an entrepreneur who is reactive. A reactive business doesn’t initiate a change in the marketplace. The strategy here is to wait for the change to happen and, once that takes place, the business strategy seeks to adapt to the change. The process, therefore, is not anticipatory. The business risk here lies in being caught unawares perpetually. Those who seek to change only when a change is demanded from them face the risk of losing out to the competitors.

Let’s take the example of land acquisition. If you have a shop on land that you know may be acquired for development, the smartest move would be to seek a place ahead of the take-over where you can enjoy a locational advantage. But if you wait for the resettlement process to start, you may not get a location that would provide you even the advantage you enjoy at your current location.

You may wake up one day to find that the business neighbour and your competitor has booked a place that provides him with a competitive advantage that could have been yours had you decided to be an active adaptor. Being a reactive agent, you will have to reinvent the wheel of success in an allotted space. The space will be an external condition that you will have to accept and redraw your survival strategy.

A successful business strategy focuses not on surviving just ‘now’ but, on the contrary, it takes the present as a condition and leverages that to secure the future. They call this ‘staying future-safe’. In our example, if the person acts on the rumour and actively searches for another location, he is leveraging his current condition to insure himself against a possible regulatory threat.

It’s a win-win situation for him. If the acquisition doesn’t happen, he wins with an expanded business. If it comes through, he also wins with a protected, if not a better, location. In the new plot, if the location is not good for the business he used to do, he will not be a loser. He has a better place elsewhere that would provide him with the chance to think through and come up with a plan to use the government allotted plot profitably.

A reactive adapter has the disadvantage of being a laggard or a follower. A temperamentally future-safe adapter, on the other hand, would always have the advantage of staying ahead. He wouldn’t wait for the market to tell him to diversify. He would always seek to create product differentiation and strive to dictate his customer preference. He wouldn’t ride the product life-cycle; he would strive to dictate the product life cycle.

How and what would obviously depend on the nature of the business concerned but the hallmark of all survivors in business is staying ‘future safe’ by realizing that change is the only constant.