Two Essential Components to Running a Business

Simply put, the two essential components to running a (small) business are:

1. Nimbleness

Merriam-Webster: able to move quickly, easily, and lightly : able to learn and understand things quickly and easily.

2. Flexibility
Merriam-Webster: easily changed : able to change or to do different things : willing to change or to try different things.

Nimbleness means your business is able to quickly and effectively make decisions that affect the bottom line. An employee needs to be hired (or fired); a piece of equipment needs to be ordered; a system or process needs to be changed.

Flexibility means you’re able to carry out those decisions, because making decisions and carrying them out are two different things. Flexibility looks like this: an organization whose culture is built around change – recognizing when something needs to change, identifying how to change it, implementing the change.

I stay nimble and flexible in my own business by embracing the almighty “cloud.” What this means is that my laptop or phone can fall in a puddle or catch on fire, and I don’t lose any productivity or data. To do so means I had to be flexible enough to stop saving every file to my desktop and adopt saving files to Dropbox. But that flexibility offers me the ability to be nimble – to move quickly – in the event of a disaster: my laptop falling into a puddle.

Nimbleness and flexibility are the two best friends your business should have.