14. January 2010 15:18
Posted by Paul Gladden
Seeing as we’re only a few weeks into the new year I thought I‘d share some thoughts for 2010 before the afterglow of our new year’s celebrations fades completely.
This time of year many of us compensate for holiday indulgences by vowing to make some fundamental changes in the way we live our lives. Some may be relatively simple - eating better or hitting the gym - while others may aim for higher ideals - a new career or going after that elusive promotion. In short, we all want change for the better.
The problem of course, as some witty person once noted, is that “95% of new year’s resolutions fail or end in divorce.” While this might get you to smile it should also get you thinking about the nature of change. Change is hard for people. In my personal experience, I think this is due in large part to the fact that humans tend to be pretty conservative creatures. But that’s understandable when you consider the world each of us must get up and face every morning - a world that is increasingly complicated both socially and technologically. To manage this each of us has a set of routines and habits that help us navigate our way through it all. While these habits and routines are intended to help us manage complexity, they can also become obstacles when we become inflexible and unwilling to adapt.
Here at SamSari, I’ve noticed this affect on a bigger scale, when we work with clients from widely dispersed international organizations. Innovation these days proceeds at such a rate that staying relevant in the market means being able to mobilize a flexible workforce that is easily able to adapt to sudden changes. This can wreak havoc on carefully established routines and processes, on entire business models. So what’s the solution?
For many organizations, success comes with following the same kind of resolutions that work for those rare individuals that succeed in making personal changes ‘stick’. Whether it’s the friend who manages to quit smoking, or the multinational company that finally adopts a more efficient sales process, the results tend to be achieved in similar ways. Usually these include setting specific goals that can be reasonably achieved, clearly defining new behavior and providing a support system to reinforce that behavior.
So, what's it going to be this year? Change? Or more of the same?
