The Dynamics of Change: How to successfully recognise and adapt your mindset and actions to win in an ever-changing world

change.

Let’s get this straight from the get-go, nobody is immune to change.

Everybody will experience a change in their lives at some point or another. Whether it is forced upon them or they make the conscious effort to create change in their life, change is inevitable. You could even go so far to say that our lives are just a constant state of change, from the day we are born till the day we die, our lives are made up of a series of changes.

One of the things I love and really value in my life is having the opportunity to listen to, connect with and learn from those people who have gone before me in life. Whether that is my grandparents, my parents or even people my own age, and in the process of researching and writing this book, I have realised that all the milestones in our lives are simply the points in time at which our lives change.

Whenever you talk to someone elderly about their life and what they’ve achieved they normally tell their story based around a set of points in their lives where something changed.

They start with where they were born and grew up, and then the first point of significant change…they moved somewhere else, usually to get a job or after they’d finished school. Following that they might talk about how they travelled around, i.e. the CHANGE of their physical location. Then they had a change in their emotions, they met someone significant in their life, fell in love, maybe they fell out of love. CHANGE. They bought their first house…CHANGE. Gave birth to a child…CHANGE. Somebody passed away…CHANGE. I think you get the gist.

Change can be positive and lead to personal, professional and spiritual growth. Change can be negative and be a time of grief and sadness. But at the end of the day and at the end of our lives change is going to happen whether you like it or not.

Some see change as a negative and prefer to live life the same with as little change or variation as possible, drive the same car, wear the same clothes, talk to the same people, live in the same house…forever. I believe those who don’t embrace change in their lives, when it’s all done and finished, won’t be able to tell those stories filled with exciting, thrilling and fulfilling adventures.

So, I put this to you, do you want to live an awesome life where you’re surrounded by new people, new challenges, new inspiration every day? Or would you be happy living the same simple day over and over again changing only when absolutely necessary? I ask you to consider to stories you’d like to be able to pass on to the next generation, consider how you might like to empower others with a sense of adventure and creation throughout their lives as well as your own.

The choice is yours. Embrace change or prepare to be left behind.

Nobody is immune

Everybody will be subject to change at one point or another, regardless of your gender, race, or religion, regardless of the size of your company, sector you operate within or your location. Change is happening all the time.

To start off this little section I’d like to paraphrase one of my favourite personal development coaches, Tony Robbins and say, change isn’t happening to you, it’s happening for you.

Many people shudder at the mention of the idea of change. But the truth is, change is inevitable. We can choose to be rigid and closed to this idea, or we can open our mind and welcome change and the new opportunities it brings with it.

However, there are those who will, despite what may be good for them and those around them, continue to rebel and resist against change.

Throughout history, there have been so many recounts of resistance of change, one of the most notable stories and one that sticks in my mind is the Catholic Church’s conflict with the forefather of astronomy Galileo Galilei in the early 1600s. We all now know and commonly accept the fact that the Earth revolves around the sun. Back in Galileo’s time it was a different story, the Catholic Church actually tried and sentenced the astronomer to life imprisonment under house arrest for hearsay regarding his support of the Copernicus model of the Solar System that the Earth revolves around the Sun as opposed to what was commonly accepted at the time, that the Earth was the central body and all other bodies revolved around it. It wasn’t until the year 2000 that former Pope John Paul II issued a formal apology for the church’s treatment of Galileo (LiveScience, 2013).

Could you imagine if this happened in our developed world today? Scientists imprisoned for life for theorizing, challenging historic beliefs and understandings, inventing new lens’ to view the world we live in and the universe we are a part of. It is literally what science is all about!

But it was a different time, a different societal belief system and a significant enough change for one of the most powerful organizations in the world to want to shut it down and refute any element of truth or acceptance. That’s the power of change.

However, stories of resistance against change aren’t exclusive to the 17th century.

In 2007 former Microsoft CEO, Steve Ballmer was being interviewed by David Lieberman on USA Today when he made this statement regarding the recently released iPhone, There’s no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance.

The fact that Apple had come into the mobile phone market and pioneered this new device which would eventually have the ability to replace your personal computer was again such a significant change that one of the most powerful men in corporate America at the time shifted to a state of resistance and rebuttal is so interesting to me.

Obviously, Ballmer did have a stake in the iPhone failing, however, he simply didn’t give any credit or attention to the possibility that this innovation might work let alone take the world by storm. Now in February 2019, the Apple iOS operating system holds almost one-quarter of the world’s mobile operating market share (StatCounter, 2019). Whilst Microsoft’s attempts at entering the smartphone sector have been…let’s say dismal.

On the other side of the coin we’ve seen global companies such as Walmart, GE and Cisco completely uproot their old ways of doing things and adapting their businesses to meet the changing consumer environment brought on by the innovation of the internet.

In Walmart’s case, after feeling pressure from the powerhouse that is Amazon, the company made a number of shift changes to refocus and change their tactful strategy in retaining and growing market share in what seemed like an unwinnable battle. One of the biggest actions Walmart took in adapting their business towards an e-commerce model was actually investing more than $3billion acquiring e-commerce brands such as Jet.com. which has proven a very successful move making it the number 3 online retailer in the US as of 2018 (TechCrunch, 2018) behind only Amazon and eBay.

GE, a 127-year-old multi-national conglomerate of brands, have completely transformed their company since 2001 when Jeff Immelt took the helm of CEO. In an interview with Harvard Business Review, Immelt put their transformation down to five things, they radically changed their portfolio focusing on their core industrial businesses and divesting their slower-growth, low-tech and non-industrial businesses; doubling investment in R&D, re-establishing the company as a true technology innovator; increased the global footprint of the company building a stronger presence in 180 countries around the planet; driving productivity through industrial internet and additive manufacturing; and finally simplifying the company’s operations through decentralization.

Through this period of change at GE, Jeff Immelt tripled earnings, drove record-high market share and delivered financial performance over that of its peers paying more dividends to investors during his tenure as CEO than the previous 110-year life of the company.

Finally, Cisco a multi-national corporation with 300 locations in 90 countries, 46 data centers, and more than 65,000 employees, in 2008 decided to completely change their business by reorganizing its internal IT infrastructure, one of the most complex in the world.

This change involved moving from a silo-based organizational structure to a lifecycle-based model composed of six stages: Prepare, Plan, Design, Implement, Operate and Optimize. Essentially teams were made responsible for the entire journey of each project undertaken by the company instead of one single component. This change within Cisco took two years to completely restructure but gave teams the benefit of improved communication, customer satisfaction, and productivity. Employees had more time to spend training and mentoring newer employees, and outages were reduced from 1,000 hours per quarter to 300 hours per quarter. Client-impacting incidents went down from 150 per quarter to 70 per quarter, and employees had more time to talk to clients and educate them on Cisco’s processes (TinyPulse, 2015). This change has reaped the benefits as consumer and investor preferences have changed to place greater focus on customer-centric businesses.

There are many more stories of trumped and triumphed when it comes to change, but more or less what I wanted to show you through these real-life examples is how everyone has the ability to change no matter how big or small your business or your mindset.

At the same time, the idea of change can be seen as a threat and the historic consequences may not work in your favour if change is resisted.

Why change is resisted

As we’ve seen, sometimes change isn’t always received as well as we’d like to be. In fact, change is often a source of great conflict within the business environment, personal relationships and even on a global economic scale.

Much like the cells within our body fight off a new, foreign bacteria trying to enter our system, like a virus, we naturally revert to a state of resistance against change.

Now depending on how much change we may have been exposed to throughout our lives would dictate to what degree of resistance we have towards change.

It is likely that if we have been exposed to regular change in our lives, such as moving physical location, switching jobs, or mixing up the people we surround ourselves with, we would be more open and receptive towards change. Welcoming change as something new and exciting which may present fresh opportunities. This is not necessarily something which comes naturally within our psychology though and has been reinforced through necessity more so than a conscious knowledge of non-resistance.

However, on the other side of the coin, you tend to find those people who have lived in the same place, sometimes even the same house, for most of their lives, seen and done the same things, and hung out with the same people. These people might struggle with the concept of accepting change in their environment. They’re the type of people who stand firm on what is familiar and are happy with the way things are.

Now there’s nothing wrong with this and there are plenty of people out there like this, there might even be people like this reading this book right now, and that’s okay because there is a rhyme and a reason for everything, but I believe in today’s day and age, in this time of ever-present change, that it is so important to understand why we might have a natural inclination towards resistance of change. This is especially important seeing as though the rate of change in our world is only going to accelerate and expand as a part of our lives.

After studying the psychology behind people’s natural inclinations towards change, I believe there are 2 reasons why someone might resist change.

1. Comfort in the present; and

2. Fear in the future.

Now although this may appear simple on the surface, I assure you these two reasons represent tics that are deeply rooted in our consciousness and define every decision we make.

Although both of these reasons for resisting change talk of the present and the future, the true meanings behind them and what they mean to you comes from your relationship with the past.

Firstly, comfort in the present. Basically, this is saying, you’re happy where you are. Why change when things are just fine, and dandy as is?

If you identify with this first reason it is likely that your current position of comfort has arisen from a place of discomfort in the past. Maybe you had to work your absolute butt off to get where you are today and changing that would mean going back to a place which took a real toll on you.

Maybe you lost something which landed you here and you don’t like the idea of change because that might mean risking losing even more.

Either way under both of these scenarios you believe staying where you are will mean you get to retain control on the situation and if you do nothing everything will stay the same. The past has led you to where you are, a place you feel comfortable. This feeds straight into the second reason people resist change, fear in the future.

Fear in the future is derived from similar reasons as mentioned above however, it is driven from the other end of the spectrum.

Looking forward can be a scary thing. It naturally carries with it a level of uncertainty. Nobody knows what’s going to happen tomorrow but rest assured if you were happy with the