Change, When Will We Put It Behind Us!?!@#!?

About a week ago, I participated in a conversation with a group of frustrated sales executives.  Each was facing tremendous challenges in their businesses, all were struggling to deal with these issues and getting their teams performing.  At one point in the discussions, one frustrated executive sighed, “We just need to get the changes behind us, so we can move on with our business!”

Sometimes, I think each of us feels this way.  We’d just like to get things back to normal.  We want some sanity in our lives and organizations.  We want to settle into our routines–but we face constant disruption.

I hate to say this, it sounds so trite, but the only constant in our lives is change!  When we stop–we die.  Things are changing all around us.  Our customers’ needs, our competition, our businesses.  What caused us to win yesterday is table stakes today and will be insufficient tomorrow. 

But it’s worse, the pace of change is accelerating.  Maybe in the past we didn’t fear change, we could manage it at a reasonable pace.  But today, we have to recognize the need to change and act faster–otherwise we are left behind.   And tomorrow, it will be even faster.

It’s interesting, change is seldom difficult when we are driving and initiating it.  It’s fun, we are bringing new things to our customers, we are disrupting them, getting them to think differently.  Even better, we are disrupting our competition-giving them the headaches, making them respond.

When change is imposed is when we get frustrated.  We don’t understand, we tend to resist, we have to catch up, we have to let go, we are out of control.

It’s always easier to be the changer than the changee.  We should strive to be the changers, at the same time, we need to understand how people will react–those on our team, and our customers.  We need to get them all aligned as changers to maximize our mutual success.

Change will never be behind us, it’s always in front of us.  Are you leading the change or responding to it?