Life will only change when you become more committed
to your dreams than you are to your comfort zone.
Billy Cox
Wordcount: 522 Time to read: 4 minutes
As I’ve grown older and more experienced, two things stand out for me.
First, the older I get, the dumber I feel. While, seasoned by the years, I have more knowledge and experience, I also have accrued awareness of the vast body of knowledge I don’t know.
Second, against my will, life is constantly changing. The only variables are the degree and frequency.
Life, needs, and change each have two sides like a coin – the good, and the bad. In life, when I lose something, the pain can be overwhelming until I shift my perspective to the positive and find something good that came out of it.
A shift in perspective is the old “Glass Half-Full, Glass Half-Empty’ philosophy. It’s better to work toward a positive goal than from a negative problem. In business, you can say you don’t have enough sales in a particular market, or you can say we need to increase sales in that market – two sides of the same issue. Dealing with change from a positive perspective is more productive.
A favorite engineering joke asks whether the glass is half-full or half-empty. The engineer says its twice as big as it needs to be. Perspective.
While the perspective of most is that they say they don’t like change, I’ve also recognized there are many changes people do want.
- Investments that grow in value
- New technology with just one more critical feature that makes it easier to use
- New marketing campaigns that actually increase sales
- Changing a process hoping to eliminate errors or missed opportunities
- Change product and service offerings that will create more sales to existing customers and attract new ones
- Eliminate duplication to increase profits
- Developing new skills and abilities.
- Watching their children grow and create new lives, careers, and families for themselves
- Remodeling a home
- Finding different forms of entertainment
While the world imposes constant change, I’ve found most businesses don’t pursue change until they’re forced to. Why then do businesses seem resistant to things that seem so valuable like preventative maintenance and constant improvement?
One of the reasons is cost. Making change when it isn’t required often creates expense that drain cash flow before adding to it.
Another is complexity. There are many interdependent moving parts of a business and changing any one of them can have an unanticipated impact on others.
When change is approached with a positive perspective, great benefits can be created/realized. One word that encapsulates them is growth. Some positive forms of growth include:
- Customers, revenue and profit
- Knowledge and expertise of staff from senior to front line
- Communication
- Resilience
Is your organization focused on constant improvement or change avoidance? Stasis or growth? Do your employees prefer to spend their days with mindless repetitive work or to be challenged, to learn and grow?
We’ll never stop change, why fight it? Make continuous improvement routine. Make time to think and strategize with key staff and explore the possibilities to avoid unseen problems and take advantage of hidden opportunities. Embracing change shifts focus from the negative, what are we losing, to the positive, what do we stand to gain?
