‘Future-proof’ your practice with these tips

LAS VEGAS — Prepare your practice to succeed by changing your business model, bringing your team together and investing in your “tomorrow” business, according to Geoff Colvin at Vision Expo West.

Colvin, a long-time editor and columnist for Fortune, spoke with Healio after a CooperVision-hosted event where he said he addressed industry leaders on the topic of “future-proofing” their businesses.

“At Fortune, I see a lot of businesspeople and the issues they all seem to have in common,” Colvin said.

He said he told the attendees at the event, “I’m confident they’re some of the same issues you deal with.”

Colvin’s first piece of advice was to create value in surprising new ways.

“The best companies do this in any industry — changing the business model,” he said. “You could have generations of management that never needed it. Now we continuously have to do it.”

He referred to the early years of Amazon during which the company sold books before changing to selling everything, allowing outside vendors, offering cloud computing and then focusing on Prime video.

Often this type of change involves technology, and there may be resistance within the organization, he said.

“With so much technology, there will be continual opportunities to advance the business model,” Colvin said. “The winners will be the ones that do that fastest and most affordably.”

Colvin’s second tip was to recognize the human factor in the business.

“Every CEO will say their people are their most valuable asset,” he said. “The question we now face is, how do we make sure they continue to be the most valuable asset?”

The pandemic made working from home mainstream, but now more companies are bringing employees back to the office, including Amazon.

“There’s lots of great research showing that we as humans are hardwired to communicate in person, face to face, eye to eye, and when we do that, all kinds of good things happen that just don’t happen otherwise,” Colvin said.

When people talk with each other face to face, it builds trust and relationships, he said.

“Specific research shows the more screen time people spend, the less empathy they develop,” Colvin said. “We have to be aware of this and take action. [Otherwise,] all of the value of human interaction will wither. That will be bad for the company.”

Even if employees are scattered around the country, companies should attempt to physically gather them at least once a year for a few days, he said.

Colvin’s third recommendation was to embrace and respond to today’s reality.

“We find that the best business leaders say goodbye to yesterday and build tomorrow,” he said.

“Yesterday businesses are very profitable,” Colvin said. “Everything says to protect yesterday, protect that business, but if you do that you’re never going to grow. ... We have to develop a tomorrow business. That means taking significant capital and the best people away from the yesterday business and putting them in the tomorrow business.”

For example, Microsoft had a great yesterday business with the Windows operating system, he said. In 2014, a new CEO invested in cloud computing, “and that stock that had gone nowhere for 10 years has increased by a factor of 10.”

Colvin said you do not always know if this approach will work, but “it also explains why so few business leaders are really great. Ultimately, it demands things from us personally that not everybody’s willing to do.”

Colvin reports being an author, speaker and editor at Fortune.