Change without regret

If you google “Change without regret,” you’ll find hundreds of self-help books. Strangely enough, it can be an incredibly important lesson for a company, rather than for a person trying to improve themselves and their life. Changing without feeling regret is a success factor for a business.

Those who know me are aware that self-help books are not among my favorite reads. Both the kind of business literature that borders on self-help and the type of books that focus on making you feel better are ones I tend to avoid. Not because they’re worthless, but because it’s hard to know which ones are actually valuable. Despite that, I’ve read my fair share of business literature. One advantage of reading very quickly is being able to get through collections of books even when expecting that the useful parts won’t be all that much.

What has all this business literature given me?

Quite a lot, actually—and I can even recommend a few. Several of them are of course very well known, but to move forward I thought I’d share a short list of four books worth reading if you haven’t already (which I doubt):

• Brilliant Manager by Nic Peeling.
• Good to Great by Jim Collins
• Freakonomics by Dubner and Levitt
• The Long Tail by Chris Anderson

Notice that Simon Sinek is not on this list, nor is The 4-Hour Work Week. They’re at least as famous as the ones above, but I don’t believe they know what they’re talking about.

Changing without regret

One of the many lessons I’ve drawn from my plowing through literature (we clearly work according to a mix of models) is the value of being able to change as an organization.

Sometimes you make the wrong decision (and often it’s better to make a decision—any decision—than to make none at all). Sometimes you make a decision that was right at the time but later becomes wrong, because the world changes.

Changing in those situations is a sign of strength. Accepting that you made the wrong decision, changing it, and moving on—without dwelling on the mistake—is the only way a healthy company can act.

Have we made a bunch of wrong decisions lately?

No, I actually don’t think so (though it’s hard to know in advance). Like so many others, we’ve been in a pressured situation due to circumstances, but we’ve made strong progress on several fronts. Our results-based SEO has been a resounding success even though marketing in general has struggled.

However, we have made decisions and changed course many times over the years. Since we also believe it’s better to act than not, that sometimes means making imperfect decisions—then we change without regret.