Change Happens - Faster and Faster Each Day!

Coaching is about helping people and organizations manage change.  Even the most successful person or organization cannot rest on their laurels.  They must continue to remake themselves or risk falling behind. 

Most organization and people resist change.  People take the position, "Why change, when things are going well now?"  The answer is very simple, if you do not change and keep reinventing your self you will be overtaken and fall behind. You and your skills make be deemed old and not reliant to the needs of our ever changing environment.  For years, blacksmiths were one of the best and most profitable occupations, but when the automobile came on the scene.  The car quickly replaced the horse as the chief mode of transportation.  Blacksmiths either changed and learned a new skill or they became unemployed.

In his book, "In Search of Excellence" Tom Peters identified companies that were moving forward.  Embarrassing change, using cutting edge technologies and new processes.  He found 8 basic principles that made companies thrive and succeed.  He singled out GE as one of those successful companies.  Interestingly, several years later Peters used GE again , but not as an example of a successful company, rather as an example of a poorly run company. For years GE did many things right, when Peters wrote "In Search of Excellence", but leadership began resting on it's past successes and was overtaken by it's competitors. 

If a company or individual is to survive in today's world, they must keep advancing, looking at trends, new technology, and new ideas.  Compare both Sears and Wards, once the largest retailers in the world.  Compare them to Target and Walmart.  Wards and Sears failed to use their enormous advantage to stay on top, failing to identify changing shopping trends. Both Target and Walmart saw the new trends and grew because they were willing to try something new.  If nothing else, Target and Walmart  prove that the "little upstart" can take on and overcome any complacent giant.

The same is true for everyone in the workplace.  I emphasize that people's careers are either moving forward or falling backward.  There is no standing still.  Every employee, no mater what level of employment, needs to embrace and purse new technologies and new trend.  Not staying current or keeping up new trends, technology or ideas will soon put you at a huge disadvantage.  Companies have short memories and usually are more concerned about what you are doing today and can do for me tomorrow than what you have done for me in the past.  With corporate downsizing and pressure to improve performance and productivity a failure to embrace change, where ever it comes from can be a mistake that may cost you your job.

As a coach I work with clients and companies to examine all their options and challenge them to embrace change and technology.  What areas should you be learning?  Six-sigma, new phone and communication technologies (virtual meetings).   Staying educated and knowing how to use new skills will make you valuable in whatever role you fill.