I once heard a story of a physics professor demonstrating the various states of matter with a large bucket of Silly Putty and a sledge hammer. He began by striking the surface of the Silly Putty with the hammer, only to have the hammer bounce off violently. He did that a few times to show that it wasn’t a fluke. He then set the hammer down on the top of the Silly Putty and walked to the board to begin talking about what they had seen and the nature of solids. After a few minutes, he looked over to the bucket and, feigning surprise, pointed out that the head of the hammer had now sunk below the surface of the Silly Putty—given more time, the Silly Putty was acting like a liquid. Something that seemed fixed and static had changed significantly in behavior and form with time. In the natural world, we know that rock formations crack and crumble, the sun and moon and planets and stars are continually moving in the sky, and that we are all getting older.
While we are often surprised by it, we all know—and
experience daily—that, as a Greek philosopher observed 2500 years ago, “the
only constant in life is change.” As much as we tend to settle in to the
current situation and expect it will continue, nothing in our world stays the
same.
Accepting, responding to, and, where possible, managing
change is a critical part of life. Sometimes that means adapting to, and making
the best of change over which we have no control. There are lots of books on
how to do that—a popular one is “Who Moved My Cheese?,” which explores the
varying success with which four different characters adapt to the challenges of
a changing world.
I once heard Lee Schulman, President of Carnegie Foundation
for the Advancement of Teaching, compare people experiencing change to
white-water kayakers, who have three options. They can try to paddle back
upstream to the way things used to be, but will just exhaust themselves to no
effect. They can get mad about it and throw up their hands, but then they will
simply be moved as the current carries them. The third option is to do their
best to read the currents and paddle like crazy to ensure that their knowledge,
expertise, and perspective have some impact on their path through the
turbulence. Fighting or ignoring such change never really works—just look at
Kodak, who actually invented the first digital camera, but failed to shift from
film to digital, and consequently saw its stock price fall 72% in just six
years.
And while such change can create hardship, it usually also
creates opportunity. You may actually end up in a better place and, in any
case, the ride of change through the white-water may foster growth and offer
advantages—and be thrilling! As a former currency trader, I can tell you it was
very difficult to make money in static markets, but we had the potential to
make a lot when markets were volatile.
But not all change comes from the outside and we all have
the opportunity—and sometimes the responsibility—to foster change in our world
and ourselves, and usually not in that order: Gandhi famously advised that,
“You must be the change you want to see in the world” and Michael Jackson put
that counsel to music in the lyrics to Man
in the Mirror. In the chapter on Faith I quote Augustine, who said: “Bad
times! Troublesome times! This men are saying. Let our lives be good; and the
times are good. We make our times; such as we are, such are the times.”
Each of us is continually being changed by our experiences
and relationships, but consciously changing to make yourself better is hard
work. There are lots and lots of books on that too, but before picking one up,
it’s important to have some sense of how you hope to change, which takes having
a sense of what is important to you and who you want to become. You don’t need
a complete and perfect understanding of how you want to change, but some sense
of the direction and any specific attributes (e.g. being more patient with
yourself and/or others, being more grateful and positive and hopeful, or being
more disciplined in some way) is important to help ensure that change is moving
you in the direction you intend. The world will suggest goals and directions for
you, but you need to be thoughtful and true to yourself and not just go with
the crowd.
Always remember that trying to change for the better is
hard, so you should really celebrate the success of others and yourself in
accomplishing change. The reason “a prophet is never acknowledged in his own
town” is that people have a hard time seeing growth in others they’ve known for
a long time. Take time to actually acknowledge efforts to change, and any
success. Don’t for ways in which the change is not yet complete: acknowledge
even degrees of change.
And remember that nobody likes to be reminded of things that
they wish they had not said or done—that rarely has a positive effect. So when
you’re telling stories about others, especially with other people around, try
hard to avoid that. If you mean to coach someone, do it in private, and as
constructively as possible.
Getting back to fostering change in the world beyond
yourself, there are not only books, but courses, and entire degrees on change
and change management. Being a “Change Agent” is a requirement for some jobs
and is actually a job title. It’s a huge deal and well beyond this chapter or
even book, but I offer the same advice I did for personal change: work hard to
do the research and analysis to understand things before you make any
changes—you don’t want to unplug a cord because you need the outlet, only to
later discover that you unplugged the refrigerator!
It’s important to envision a process, organizational
structure, or whatever that is truly better, and understanding the current
situation well enough to ensure that nothing important is lost in making the
change—or at least that you understand and accept the tradeoffs.
And it should be noted that sometimes people want to make
changes just for the sake of change, which can be costly and a bad idea if done
without good reason and careful planning. My father used to say, “Doing what
has always been done is a bad substitute for thinking,” but also shared the
well-known advice, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Both are true, and it
takes research, thought, and wisdom to know when to apply each.
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