This is a post from my My 20-day Zappos + Buffer Values Challenge
“Embrace and Drive Change”
When it’s change you want – change you asked for, it’s easy to talk about embracing and driving change, but that’s only part of it.
It’s different when it’s unexpected change. Suddenly you have to do things differently (when you didn’t ask for it), suddenly things are different around you, and you realise you don’t know how to do things you previously were an expert at.
I think it’s really useful to choose a value about choosing Positivity and Happiness – that way you can take an optimistic approach to all change – which makes it a lot easier.
If you’re thinking, “this environment has changed since I first came into it, but maybe this change will help it in great ways that I don’t yet understand“, then you’re likely to be able to accept and drive the change much more easily, than if you were worried about the negative consequences.
I’m struggling quite hard to think of times that I’ve embraced change when I’ve not been one of the drivers – I guess it’s quite important for me to feel that I have a stake in the change – otherwise I don’t class it as “change to be embraced” – just “things that happened”.
So changes to my role at work, were embraced and driven because they directly involved me. Changes to the way software and processes worked were critically evaluated, but embraced.
I’m not sure, but I feel I don’t have enough life experience to talk much about how I’ve embraced change. I probably have done so – the tech industry has changed, I’ve changed, my friends have changed – but I can’t see examples in front of me.
I guess attempts at politics and activism reflect my desire to drive change, but I feel that the best I can come up with in the embracing bit is “sure, I embrace new technology, I use Uber“.
My feeling is that it may be that I just enjoy a constant state of change – I enjoy diversity in things I do, I enjoy hearing about positive changes to UK law, working on different projects, climbing different mountains, and going to different places.
Despite my uncertainty about whether I can say I apply it, I think this is really important and clever value to have in a business – a self-updating module in anything is always wise, as human organisations go through many changes, incarnations and phases – just like software. A value like this helps ease the organisation through those hoops and hurdles and makes the path much smoother and clearer.
What do you think?
