Daily Inspiration: “Never try to change the fact that change happens!”

“Never try to change the fact that change happens!” – Futurist Jim Carroll

On any given day, change happens. It’s what you do with it that matters!

Yet many people fight the change around them – but deep in their hearts, know that it’s probably best that they actually try to deal with it. And in fact, in a faster future, they know they have to deal with it.

Given that, it’s time to resurrect my original “change” video!

I know I’ve shared the video before but it is always worth revisiting! The quick backstory? Outside the home office at my previous home, we had what my family came to call the “squirrel highway.” All day long, they scurry back and forth along the top of the fence, busy collecting and hiding food. A few years ago, my sons and I wondered what would happen if we put up some highway signs for them to obey.  We set up a video camera — taped for six hours running — and edited out the best bits.

This clip was the funniest one — and seems to tell a bit of a story as to the right way to deal with change. Change should never be a barrier – there is always a way around it!

I spend a huge amount of my time in keynotes and workshops helping organizations adapt to the rapid rates of change that surround us. And it’s certainly clear that lots of people just aren’t good with change – I can see it in my audience and the results in the text message polling that I do.  The thing about change is that it’s easy to try to avoid it – inertia is easy. When confronted by change, many people react by …. doing nothing. When things are uncomfortable, the easiest thing to do to deal with that discomfort is to avoid it. Such thinking causes many organizations and the people within them to fall asleep. They keep doing what they’ve been doing before, hoping that will carry them forward into the future. Obviously, that can’t work, for a whole variety of different reasons.

It’s also easy to avoid tough decisions: organizations are faced with a lot of change, in terms of business models, customer expectations, cost pressures, new competitors, and countless other challenges. Dealing with any one of these issues requires tough decisions, but in many cases, it’s easier to put those decisions off into the future rather than having to deal with them. You can avoid change by … deciding not to confront the change that is necessary!

The result? Some people wish that everything around them would just stay the same.

Innovators are eager to change everything they can.

They also recognize that EVERYTHING is going to change and they need to align with that fact.

The issue of change is so critical that it has become the closing observation for most of my keynotes, with the key phrase that you should “change your future before the future changes you!”

Which person do you choose to be?