Photo courtesy of The Good Men Project

Ah, change...love it or hate it, it's inevitable. It comes whether you like it or not. That's why the best approach is not to resist change and do battle with it, but to find ways to make it your friend. This is the message of a recent article I wrote for The Good Men Project, entitled "Don’t Let Change Be a Stranger; How To Embrace It as Your New Best Friend." You can read it here.

Even before the pandemic, people did not like change. Change is pain, it literally hurts our brains to have to change. That's why our brains work so hard to resist change, preferring to stick to old habits and patterns. But with all the disruptions that the pandemic has brought, from work-life balance to childcare to online schooling to endless Zoom meetings, our previously predictable world has been turned upside down. What to do?

When was the last time you looked at your business with fresh eyes? Maybe it is ready for some significant changes? How would you know? How would you make them happen? As we often tell our clients "If you want to change, have a crisis or create one." If not, very little gets done. But the pressures to change are accelerating. People really hate to change. What to do?

I always enjoy my workshops with CEOs. They teach me a lot about the trends happening in the world of business growth across the U.S. and Canada. This week as we move into 2017, I am working with a group of company leaders representing a wide range of industries, all of whom had a record year (or pretty close) last year in revenues and profits. In one of our sessions, they were all applauding each other and celebrating their accomplishments. 

For a moment I thought perhaps I had the wrong group since I speak on change and these executives and I were going to spend the next three hours searching for new market space, re-inventing their strategies and focusing their attention on unmet needs, non-users and how to add value in innovative ways. Next, I was going to ask them to take a look at the big trends that are taking place in the U.S. and globally right now, and determine if they and their organizations are ready to capitalize on them. So what was up?