Belief #1
What is ‘Normal’
YOU ARE A BLEND of stability and change. Your genes, your history, your capabilities, all have an ongoing identity that is YOU. An organization is the same way. But you and the company you keep are also constantly changing. The trick is to change fast enough—in a way that keeps you growing and successful, without losing your own center and sanity.
Today, the pace of change is accelerating. This makes it more important to adapt to and influence change. Ironically, it also makes it more important to know and value what makes you, YOU; what makes your organization what it is today.
While change is a popular topic, so are stability topics like “vision,” “purpose,” and “core capabilities.” The irony of accelerating change is that it requires us to see change and stability as two sides of the same coin.
This parallels an amazing scientific discovery of the 20th century: we used to think that energy and matter were different things. Now we know that energy and matter are two expressions of the same thing. A particle (matter) can also be a wave (energy). Think of what happens in nuclear bombs—as small amounts of matter are suddenly broken apart to create all that energy.
The lesson? Each of us must be both a particle (something stable) and a wave (something changing), whether at work or at home and in the community. Neither change nor stability can exist without the other—for us personally, for us at work, or for organizations.
What are YOUR “DO” Beliefs about “What is Normal?”
If you frequently talk like this…
“I can’t wait until this is over so we can get back to business as usual.”
“Let’s go back to what worked for us in the past.”
Then, your beliefs may be holding you back.
Try to shift to a NEW way of thinking…
“Let’s use this old system as an anchor while we make these changes.”
“I want to stay up-to-date on the changes going on around us so I can prepare for them now.”
“I’m doing my job well today, but what about tomorrow? I want to stay up-to-date so I can be as good tomorrow as I am today.”
An old shop steward, who had been one of the most vocal resisters in an organization-wide empowerment initiative, stood in front of his peers and senior management. His words? “It’s taken me some time to realize it, but I had—and have—a lot to learn. For the first time in many years, I feel excited to come to work. But I’m retiring in six months. I only hope that others will take some risks and get more involved after I’m gone.”