Strategy: 3 Ways the Best Leaders Deal with Change…Some People just Can’t Accept Change. Others Thrive on It.
Some people just can’t accept change. Others thrive on it. Some hunker down and try to avoid it. Others face it head on, embrace it and climb up the next rung of the ladder because of it.
The news of change provides them the incentive and the energy to prevail over some challenge. Employers generally want to hire and keep this type of person.
There is nothing more constant in our lives than change. It’s dynamic.
Change simply means that something is different than it was a minute, a day, a week ago. Some trigger has modified the details of your life, the organization you work for, even global economic conditions.
Most all news, tweets, synchronous viral updates — which report change — are typically bad news. When have you read something on your device that was good news?
The fact is the overwhelming amount of change going on is actually good. It just doesn’t get spread around like its opposite. Fear is also a virus carrier, and it breeds on the dark side of things.
Edmund Burke wrote: “We must all obey the great law of change. It’s the most powerful law of nature.”
Change usually results in some kind of upheaval in our lives. Someone will say “I didn’t see that coming” — like a divorce, or getting fired, for example. Another might be laid off from a job and feel like they are the victim of change.
But change is actually just energy, and its positive or negative force could evolve with the personal perspective you have on it. For example, as horrific as it sounds and feels, getting fired could ultimately be positive.
The fact is, the more technology-managed our world, the faster the rate of change.
Change can be caused by evolving external forces, such as the rise of ISIS. Most people did nothing to start this phase of terror perpetrated on the world. But that doesn’t mean they can avoid its ramifications.
And then some change is fostered internally, by the change in the way you see your life going, by new perspectives on your employment, education, relationships, and your health.
Leaders are people who don’t just learn to live with or manage change — they actually create change and help others successfully navigate it.
Change is disruptive and can even be turbulent — especially when it hits close to home and plays with our emotions. But then leadership today is all about managing disruption. And disruption is an hourly occurrence.
Here are three ways to come out as the victor over change.
1. Recognize that change is a permanent fixture of our economy and our lives.
Somehow identifying it this way takes the edge off of change. President Kennedy wrote: “Change is the law of life and those who look only to the past or present are sure to miss the future.”
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Change is always around the corner. You don’t need to live in fear of it but you need to welcome it, even encourage it. This is what smart business leaders do to anticipate changes in market conditions that can effect everything from the cost of financing because interest rates fluctuate — or the loss of sales because consumer trends evolve.
Smart business leaders know they have to reinvent their business model every eighteen months or face the consequences of unseen change.
I remember my discussions with the brilliant “car guy” Bob Lutz, who transformed Chrysler and later General Motors by embracing changes in the auto-buying public. He told me that he tried to change the culture at these companies to turn them into entertainment firms father than transportation manufacturers because this was the change customers were demanding. And look at how American cars have come roaring back.
2. Listen carefully to catch the change behind the change.
Change can be tricky and misleading. Be careful not to make a superficial translation of some trend only to be led down some dead end. Not all change is what it seems on the surface.
If you don’t truly get under the change and analyze it before you react to it, you may miss something — like the critical time to quit your job and move on.
Since what I deliver for companies and nonprofits is growth, change is both a cause and a lever for the growth I am attempting to produce. At least 50% of the time there is resistance to change or what is called the “RC Factor.”
Some people cling to their old beliefs until they are torn away from them and forced to change. Sometimes people want change but they want it without changing! How much growth do you think that produces?
I remember working for one company that completely missed a major change in the market conditions that rendered their products obsolete. They just could not accept the fact that people were no longer buying from them — they knew better!
Of course that is not how it works. The customer is king. And the king will lead you to revise your products and services if you will only listen carefully enough to what the market is telling you.
3. Impersonalize change.
You are not the only person in the world affected by change. You may be stuck in a trap where you think that you caused the change in your life and that it is harmful to you alone. Taking responsibility for personal behavior is always the right thing to do. Obsessing about your own personal problems caused by change it is not.
Most often change actually happens just because world beliefs, politics, economic and social conditions are dynamic and they are constantly acting and reacting upon each other to cause the change that filters down to the individual.
It’s also important to accept that the world is in general on a course of individual and collective improvement — even though there may be dips into brutality, accidents, weather catastrophes — living conditions the world over improve every day.
More people are being educated, fewer people live in poverty, there are more cures for diseases. Longevity is increasing and that itself shows a consolidation of progress.
Jim Rohm wrote that “Life does not get better by chance. It gets better by change.”
What I try to do is to balance what I hear about conditions in general. I try to not be influenced by one speaker or leader. I attempt to think for myself and form my own opinions about change. Then I try to use it to my advantage and play a game to see if I can guess when and where it will appear next.
James Rosebush was a Reagan White House official and is now the CEO and founder of GrowthStrategy.us. His leadership column appears on Business Insider every Tuesday.
http://www.businessinsider.com/3-ways-the-best-leaders-deal-with-change-2015-3#ixzz3Ueylz0pE
