‘Only 4% of the Dutch still trust politics,’ the media recently headlined. The double fall of the Schoof government and the chaos in The Hague create great uncertainty. Brussels is also rumbling: policies are being adjusted, laws paused or adjusted.
For business owners, this is frustrating. What rules will soon apply to my business? What will future policies look like? This uncertainty leads to one reaction: wait and see.
The reflex to do nothing
This uncertainty leads to an understandable but risky reflex: “Do nothing,” many entrepreneurs think. Why invest in sustainable technology if the regulations are unclear? Why innovate if you don’t know what rules will apply tomorrow?
The world is complex enough as it is. A wavering government doesn’t make it any easier. So entrepreneurs choose the safe path: don’t invest, don’t change, don’t lead.
Yet doing nothing is not an option. For sustainable operations, it is crucial to keep innovating and responding to market developments. Standing still is, by definition, going backwards.
Internal versus external factors
Why do entrepreneurs let political uncertainty affect them so much? I think the answer lies in how we look at external factors.
Business operations involve internal factors (capital, employees) and external factors. Of those external factors, entrepreneurs are mainly guided by direct signals: “the customer wants it” or “regulations prohibit it.”
But precisely the latter – political uncertainty – is now given disproportionate weight. Entrepreneurs focus so much on what can go wrong because of policy changes that they miss other external opportunities.
This cautious attitude is understandable. Why invest when regulations can change tomorrow? Yet I see that entrepreneurs who do dare to invest despite political uncertainty are often the most successful.
Sustainable and profitable
Sustainability and profitability can go well together. Take the owners of the fishing cutter OD 6 ‘Zeldenrust’ from Ouddorp. Despite all the uncertainty, they recently dared to completely renovate their cutter for six months to diesel-electric propulsion (E-power Fishing). The result? Considerable fuel savings and much less emissions, without loss of speed or pulling power.
These kinds of successes do not arise from intuition alone. Increased complexity has made real analysis necessary, I think.
DESTEP: more than just politics
We at Empact work with the DESTEP method to systematically analyze external developments. DESTEP stands for Demographic, Economic, Socio-Cultural, Technological, Ecological and Political-Judicial factors.
So politics is only 1 of 6 externalities. A real-life example: demographically, Europe is aging. This stimulates the demand for healthy proteins such as fish, seafood (omega-3, heart health). For a seafood company, I believe this opens up opportunities for:
- Senior-friendly packaging
- Health positioning in marketing
- Omega-enriched plant-based alternatives
And this stems from just one trend in the DESTEP analysis.
From analysis to action
Of course, such an analysis raises new questions. Which opportunities do we seize first? How do we combine different trends? What is important but not urgent?
However, these questions are far more valuable than blindly waiting for the political storm to blow over. By systematically looking at all external factors, we make better strategic choices regardless of what happens in The Hague.
Political uncertainty is only part of the context in which we operate. And certainly no reason to stand still.
This column was previously posted on Fishtrend.com