FOR any business, the key to success lies in meeting changes in the business environment.

But is it simply the ability to handle change and to adapt accordingly that makes for a successful company or organisation?

Professor David Hunt, president of the Institute of Financial Accountants, during his presentation titled "The Challenge and Management of Change" at the Laksamana College of Business yesterday, said, "Success, in contrast to survival, will need both anticipation and adaptability in large measure. However, such is the speed and worldwide nature of communication today that individuals and organisations have very little time to consider and act."

In his paper, he said, "Until recently, individuals (and their businesses if small) could ignore change if they had less than 10 years before retirement. The pace of change has all but eroded that possibility. For them and other businesses, change has to be anticipated and met.

"Once decisions are taken as to which markets to go for, businesses must allocate funds of time and money to secure, one way or another, the necessary skills at the right time in the right place. Consideration has to be given as whether to stay within the traditional services or move outside altogether.

"The choices will not be easy," he warned.

"Change is inevitable but response is not. Setting priorities and retaining a sense of perspective are the keys to success," Hunt said.

He added, "Setting your priorities right not just for you as a person but for your organisation and when you've done that make decisions based on those priorities."

The hardest thing for most businesses and people, he said, is not working out the priorities and not working out the possible decisions, but actually taking that decision.

Asked if this was a problem that most people in business have, Hunt said, "Yes, it is. Change is going to affect everybody."

In the case of Brunei, its limited market is often seen as a challenge in the ability of local SMEs to grow exponentially.

Hunt however, disagreed with this, "I don't think it really matters; whether there's a great potential for growth or not, you still want to run your business and you still want to earn a living from it. So if the expansion isn't there, you look at other things you're going to do (and) some of that may be reducing costs here and there. You still have to have the principles, you're still going to have change. The change is not necessarily in your market, but it might be in the technology that you use or sell, so you've still got to cope with all that."

It might also entail political change, Hunt mused, be it in the way the government operates or makes decisions.

He said change affects everybody businesses, organisations governments and individuals.

"Everybody faces change. You can't even, when you get to 55 now, stop doing anything and run through retirement because there's going to be so much change in that period so everybody's going to be looking at factors of change."

Hunt affirms the ability of thinking positive on a business saying it does have the ability to positively affect the way a company or business performs financially or economically. "Yes, because it depends on whether people are thinking positive, but I think if there's a culture of thinking positive in the whole organisation, then yes, because you will always find solutions."

If you're not part of the solution, then you're part of the problem, he added.

In the wake of the movement towards globalisation, Hunt identified the speed of technological change as the most evident type of change across the globe. "I think if anything happens, whether it's detrimental or whether it's positive, is down to your attitude towards the change. So yes, I think that some people might find it detrimental and throw their hands up but I think the message has got to be that you've got to be very positive about it. You've got to take charge of your life. You can change as a person if you want to. The other message is, if you've got a problem and you can't do anything about it, then stop worrying about it and get on with something else. Of course, if you can do something about it, change it."

He notes in his paper that in respect of technological change, it has developed much faster than the political will to adapt to the changes. "For example, in the past, the effects of changes of government might slowly have percolated through to the rest of the world unless it was a dramatic change in a truly global power."

Hunt theorises that the improvements in digital communication networks (together with major migrations of people from developing to developed countries over the last 30 years), "should have led to a greater understanding of and possibly greater respect for other people's culture and behaviour", but this seems to have conversely led to a "counteracting move towards fundamentalism in areas immune from such population movements or where such movements have long since passed".

In the world of business, Hunt notes that markets, particularly financial markets, have already developed rapidly worldwide, with regional economic groupings attempting to "compensate for the increased powerlessness of individual countries and to gain advantage from economies of scale".

He also identified a movement in the economic sphere of influence, from the Atlantic to the Pacific Basin within the last four decades, which has also seen developed countries shifting from manufacturing to services.

A major change that Hunt also identified in his paper, was that oil-rich countries are more or less, able to protect themselves when major world economic decisions are taken by only a few countries, citing members of the Group 8 or maybe G20. The Brunei Times