The consistent things about change:
1) It’s always relative.
2) It’s not that bad.
3) Our receptiveness to change depends on our internal risk scorecard (see: Risk Homeostasis). In short we are happy with change in some parts of our lives not others.
4) It’s good for us. Keeps us on our toes.
5) Change has flow on effects. Always. Ensure that change is having positive flow on.
From Alan Webber’s 52 Rules of Thumb:
“Change happens when the cost of the status quo is greater than the risk of change C(SQ)>R(C)
It’s that second part that sounds out to me, really looking at and investigating – what is the true cost of the status quo. What happens if you don’t move forward? Can you really live with that? Will your organisation survive if you don’t?
A good mantra to have “know what works but accept that it isn’t permanent”.
Just because a solution works today, doesn’t mean it will tomorrow, or next year.
And vice versa, what doesn’t work today, may work next year.
Holding this mantra true keeps you proactive, receptive to new ideas & opportunities but most of all creating a habit of questioning everything. And that’s not too shabby a habit to have.
Risk Homeostasis is a theory that humans have a certain level of acceptable risk and we will seek to keep that in equilibrium.
If we take high risk in one part of our life we will seek to minimise it in another part.
For example, in a Munich Case Study two groups of taxis were monitored for accidents. One group had ABS brakes installed, the others stayed with the regular breaks. You would think then that the ABS guys had less accidents right?
Wrong. What they found was the accident rate was about the same, the group with ABS having gained better braking would take other risks (ie braking late).
Have a read over at WikiPedia. Watch my video below on RadioWammo discussing it:
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqMQ7yAVNSg
It has interesting implications for all change, innovation and risk when you think about it.
Thanks to Malcolm Gladwell for the inspiration in his latest book What the Dog Saw.
One offs are expensive, focus on ongoing relationships where you can work together, get to know one another, take a dance.
For the continual ongoing growing relationship is made up of thousands of small steps, each compounding the previous. It’s this approach which creates tremendous change.
I was quite a curious kid, always asking questions, the ever curious question of WHY? My first job was classic of this, it was assisting the local fire wood producer, chop up and distribute firewood.
My boss was an aging man, putting in the last few years before retirement, and it was his little one man band. Our first job was to go out and collect the firewood, he would use the chainsaw to cut trees brought down by flooding. Firstly he would cut the trees into rounds, my job was to then grab the rounds, put them in a pile.
We would then split the rounds in half, load them on the back of the flatbed truck and take them back to his wood yard. Back at the yard, unload all the wood, put it in a pile. The next step was to cut the wood with a log splitter, stack in another pile.
Finally we were ready for orders! Orders were by the cubic metre, and so a certain amount of barrow loads was a cubic metre. We would then load the truck up an order at a time and deliver it.
It took me all of one day to speak up and go, hang on we are double, triple handling this wood. Why don’t we split the back of the flatdeck truck in half, then into little stalls, the horizontal sides of the stall being such we could pull them out.
Then we could cut the firewood, split it on location, throw it into the stalls (which could be measured out on a cubic metre basis) then deliver straight to the customer. We could save sooo much time. “No Ben, this is the way I do it”.
This frustrated me to no end, but hey I got $10 for a mornings work and that bought me basketball cards. I hung in there annoyed at partaking in such an inefficient process, as soon as the opportunity came up I quit my job and moved on.
What I rapidly learned was the concept of idea development, failing fast, modifying and moving on. It’s no big secret, smart people understand it and embrace it. Fail fast. However whilst there is understanding – we fall short of having a mechanism for it.
That’s what the 12 Hour Startup (my first idea in The Best Ideas are Free) is about – formalising a mechanism that allows for remarkable ideas to be shared, tested, proven and ultimately to create significant change.
Naturally we shy away from pain. However there are times when we should push through it and others where we should just quit.
You probably have heard someone say if it’s not coming easy, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it and to back off let it happen naturally. (ie if you ought to be doing it it should be easy).
OR
You are doing something completely new and it’s painful because you haven’t experienced it before – you should push through.
So which is it?
There is no strict answer, you learn through experience.
However in the meantime pick up The Dip and have a read, helps you learn when to stick and when to quit.
As I discussed in a prior post about the 80 / 20 Rule roughly speaking 20% of causes create 80% of consequences.
It was upon this (and other trends) the 12 Hour Startup idea came into fruition, the idea that in a condensed time frame you can stimulate these causes that in the long run will drive big consequences.
We all know the stories, those that stayed up all night to complete that essay that go them an A, doing a proposal last minute, no matter what happens we seem to always slide it in.
My thought is to encourage this more often, we are going to build this product by next week, I am going to finish that job by Monday as it’s been sitting around too long.
You should try it, put some pressure on yourself to complete more of the things that are important in condensed time frames.
You’ll be surprised at how often you nail it.
This is exactly how this blog came about, I spent April this year doing a road trip around the South Island of New Zealand writing blog posts, and i gave myself a 24 hour deadline to get the blog up and running with my first post. Wham, Bam, Done.
So what do you have in motion that you can condense and get it done?
(and then you can move onto the next mountain)
The bus driver can’t hear you. He has already driven away.
He couldn’t care less, you should have been on time,
You should have been there when he cared, when he had time to give you attention.
Dam.
Oh well the next bus is 10 mins away? Wrong. It could be 5 mins away or 25 mins away.
You don’t know.
You know it is coming, but when?
The point is, in the meantime you’ve missed out.
Communications is rapidly changing and has been doing so for years, the bus has come and gone many times, each time it does, you miss out!
So when are you going to be on time jump on board, and give it a shot. As hey one day its going to be lonely at that bus stop.
Leadership is powerful.
Pioneering, Revolution, Change
Magical.
However leadership is lonely.
You are at the front, carving a new path, and have to endure the flak.
It’s a hard hard battle.
You need to persevere,
Through these hurdles.
To change.
Obama will be reflecting on this today (and realising)
Perseverance is genius.
And THIS is what leadership is all about.