Tag Archives: change
Are you the best at something nobody needs anymore?
The antivirus on my laptop is Antivir and has been for the past 8 years. It makes me feel that I’m protected from adware, spyware and any sort of thing that can bring down my computer. It also makes me feel proud to say it because I know the Avira team is more than up to the challenge of staying ahead of my needs by making sure their ‘software’ never feels outdated.
Bottom line is I know they’re always on their heels and will work to keep their product ahead of the pack.
Why am I telling you this?
Remember the boiling frog syndrome?
If you drop a frog into boiling water, it will instinctively jump out. But if you place a frog in a pot of cool water and gradually increase the temperature, the frog won’t notice that the water is getting hotter. It will sit there until the water boils and boil with it.
This is what most businesses suffer from. They let routine set in and let the habits that brought the success before to blind them of changing opportunities, changing times, new behaviors to become outdated and irrelevant, in a word inertia set in. They failed to change and became the best at something nobody needed anymore.
The history of your organization is not set in stone
Because change is continuous it’s is very difficult to know what is next after you’ve made it past the first curve but merely accepting that tomorrow is not going to be like to today is a great place to start. This means you have to do activities that are different from the day to day stuff your organization does, it means you have to make time to think, ponder and reflect to get a point of view of where things are going and then make some experiments to test your POV.
Innovation is all about change and this requires that you have all your senses in tune to what’s changing around you. The day to day stuff gives you no insight into what’s changing, it only reinforces what you already know which is going to become irrelevant sooner than later.
I don’t know how the Antivirus of the future looks like but I bet Avira has a good idea and I’m willing to stay with them because they’re in it for the long haul.
Change not growth
What’s very dangerous is not to evolve.
See that strange looking animal that looks like it was in the movie Avatar? It’s called a Mexican walking fish, or axolotl, and is one of the most bizarre creatures on the planet. Not just because of how it looks but because it has the distinct ability to regrow limbs. The mexican walking fish isn’t really a fish, it’s salamander and it’s closely related to frogs and other amphibians with whom they share some of the same characteristics.
Enough with biology class. Why did I put that picture in this post?
Because as bizarre a creature this is, it reminded me of how everything evolves and how different species combine or recombine themselves to form new species that adopt the abilities of others and so forth. We’re so used to seeing the same types of animals all the time that when we see something like an Axototl it seems alien to us.
The same happens in business, we get so used to seeing the same types of businesses all the time that when we see one that operates in a totally different way than the others they seem crazy to us. And you know why? Because we’re not evolving, we’re getting left behind and pretty soon the one’s that are evolving will put us out of business.
And then the cycle repeats itself. Where in the cycle are you?
I think it’s important that we be aware that we also must evolve. Consultants will tell you that you need to cannibalize your business, what they’re really trying to tell you is your business needs to evolve not because they say so but because everything changes.
To evolve doesn’t mean to grow, it means to change.
Like evolution, change doesn’t start in the mainstream where you’re sitting, it starts at the edges. Like new types of businesses, new species of animals are created at the edges and then some eventually move to the mainstream while others stay on the edge.
Do you think your dog, cat or fish has looked that way forever? Do you think your business will look the same way in 5 years? Do you think your customers will always want the same thing you’re selling? Do you think the industry/market you operate in will always exist, operating in the same way with the same players in 5 years? Do you think tomorrow is going to be the same as today?
The answer is: NO.
One last thought to remember and you knew it was coming: It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change. – Charles Darwin.
Hopefully we’re all changing to stay relevant, not just in the pursuit of growth.
Adapt and achieve
The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc divx Adaptability is the best skill you can have. Basketball is a game of rhythm, you set the pace at which you want to play and force the other team to adapt. If your familiar with basketball drills, in basketball practice we have what’s called rolling waves where the goal is to score the most times to stay on the court, the challenge is to play teams that constantly change players so you never face the same team twice. The game is continuous and doesn’t stop until your team loses and then the winner keeps playing.
This makes it very interesting because not only does your team have to adapt but your opponent also has to adapt to their new members. It forces you to play everyone differently as opposed to accepting how the game should be played, you change the game by modifying the rhythm and never showing the same play over and over again.
Improvisation is your best weapon.
The point is you don’t want to fall into predictable patterns of play, never using the same play again because it worked before but rather make it difficult for your opponent to read you by changing your approach continuously.
The ability to play outside other’s experience is THE supreme skill in any strategists arsenal because your opponent will never know what you’ll do next. Change your approach continuously and accept that there is no normal, only continuous change.
Key takeaway: The most adaptive prevail, it’s as simple as that Blood Diamond video
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There is no normal. Everyday is a crisis
There is no secret formula to mastering change but we can start by accepting that change is always constant. Last week I was in Ninjutsu class and sensei said something very interesting that got me thinking:
Humans have been in crisis everyday since we created fire.
He was referring to the fact that ninjas were trained to adapt and survive, but there’s something much deeper we can learn from this.
Ninjutsu was born in a time of turmoil in Japan and by it’s nature is fluid and non-linear, it was created on the assumption that war is unpredictable and so you must adapt to changing conditions intuitively.
As a society we are faced with tremendous challenges right now because as humans we fall into the mindset that some events are preceded by other events, this is flawed.
Instead of thinking of the world where the present is determined by the past, we must adopt the mindset that change is continuous and unending. Ninjutsu is an art of war and in war there isn’t a normal state, you have to be constantly adapting and changing to circumstances which are out of your control. It is less and art of prediction and more of anticipation where you become part of your surroundings as much as your opponent.
You reinvent yourself by adapting to what’s happening around you and gain power by being able to constantly shift and adjust. By being fast and non-linear we stay ahead of our opponents and adapt to opportunity because standing still means death.
So what we should do is not wait for the storm to pass but act and behave as if the storm is always here.
