The last six years have brought an extraordinary period of change for businesses. We’ve lived through a global pandemic, widespread supply-chain disruption, rapidly rising inflation and a cost-of-living crisis. UK businesses have seen interest rates rise from a historic low of 0.1% to 5.25% – their highest level in 15 years, while geopolitical conflict and continued economic uncertainty have added further pressure. And, alongside all of this, we’ve witnessed the rapid rise of artificial intelligence and the beginning of another fundamental shift in how businesses operate.
For business leaders, adapting to change has become part of doing business.
Some changes have been temporary. Others have permanently altered how people live, work, communicate, buy and make decisions. Knowing the difference, and understanding when your business needs to respond, has become increasingly important.
If there’s one thing we’ve learned from working with businesses throughout this period, it’s this:
Growth doesn’t come from doing what you’ve always done.
That doesn’t mean chasing every trend. There will always be a new platform, technology or marketing trend promising to transform your business.
Successful businesses don’t adopt all of them.
They recognise when something represents a genuine change in how their customers behave, how their market operates or how their organisation could work more effectively.
We’ve seen this repeatedly across the organisations we work with, and we’ve noticed that the ones who thrive are also the ones who challenge the status quo and disrupt their industry and competitors.
Sometimes that disruption is obvious.
The Kabuki Syndrome Foundation is investing in AI drug discovery, exploring whether emerging technology can help accelerate the search for treatments for an ultra-rare genetic disorder.
Healthcare Skills Training International is responding to rapid advances in healthcare technology by evolving the education it provides to healthcare professionals, ensuring its training reflects the technologies, skills and ways of working shaping modern clinical practice.
But disruption doesn’t always mean developing something entirely new. Sometimes it means being prepared to question how things have traditionally been done.
We’ve been part of that disruption ourselves. Major organisations with national influence and significant responsibility for industry standards have made the decision to move critical digital infrastructure away from large, traditional agencies and entrust it to Bubbly Consulting. These aren’t simply corporate websites. They include complex platforms holding substantial volumes of business-critical data and information that supports industry standards, compliance and safety. Moving them isn’t a decision taken lightly. But these organisations have been prepared to challenge the assumption that agency scale, large account teams and impressive offices automatically represent the safest or most capable choice. Instead, they’ve chosen a boutique agency model built around senior expertise, agility, technical capability and direct access to the people responsible for both the thinking and the delivery. Sometimes challenging the status quo means being prepared to reconsider what the safe choice actually looks like.
These are organisations willing to question whether the way something has always been done is still the best way to do it.
That willingness to challenge convention matters because periods of significant change don’t only create new risks. They create opportunities for businesses prepared to move before the status quo catches up.
Analysis from the Office for National Statistics found that UK businesses adopting advanced technologies were associated with 19% higher turnover per worker than non-adopters, even after controlling for differences in management practices and other characteristics.
We see the same pattern across our clients. The businesses that continually question how they operate, invest in technology that genuinely improves what they do and respond to changes in their customers and markets create more opportunities to improve productivity, develop better products and services, reach new customers and ultimately, grow.
We’ve embraced change too
We’ve been fortunate enough to grow considerably since 2020, despite everything the last six years have thrown at businesses. Our turnover has tripled, we’ve expanded internationally and our original two-person business now works with a collective of 13 specialist consultants across the UK and North America.
But we haven’t achieved that growth by continuing to offer the same services in the same way.
We’ve adapted our business as technology has changed, new opportunities have emerged and our clients’ needs have evolved. Today, that increasingly means helping organisations understand how AI can be incorporated into websites, digital marketing, workflows and wider business processes.
Six years ago, that service didn’t exist.
Six years from now, there will undoubtedly be opportunities we can’t yet predict.
That’s the point.
The businesses best placed to grow aren’t necessarily those that can predict what’s coming next. They’re the ones prepared to recognise meaningful change when it happens, understand what it means for their business and act when the opportunity is right.
If your business is navigating change, exploring new opportunities or questioning whether your current marketing and digital strategy is still fit for where you’re going next, we’d be interested to hear about it.
Talk to Bubbly Consulting about what’s next for your business: hello@areyoububbly.com
