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How To Avoid Becoming Irrelevant – Change is a’Come’n

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Face it: it is very likely the way you work is outdated and much less effective than your competitors – um, I mean your peers’.  Why?

We watch the rise and fall of businesses.  Each week it seems an “established” company is going under, is filing for bankruptcy or is being purchased for a fraction of what it once was worth.

In the book The Innovator’s Dilemma Clay Christiansen took a look at why businesses rise to glory and then fail.  (Fascinating book – it needs to be on your MUST read list.)  He points out that as the consumer’s values change a new business is there to take them on.  They fill the niche and in time they have a successful company.  But soon the customer redefines value – again – and the company doesn’t change with it.  They keep filling the original value (because some people stay there).

A great Forbes piece was recently written about this.  The author writes, “..with the rate that the tech world is moving these days, there are good reasons to think both (Google and Facebook) might be gone completely in 5 – 8 years.”  Web 1.0 is overtaken with Web 2.0 is overtaken with Social is overtaken with Mobile is overtaken by…?  What’s next?

So it is with the way we work.  The way we have worked in the past is not sufficient for today – or tomorrow.  It is mandatory that we change.  If we don’t, as our companies morph they will place a greater value on work habits we have not developed, styles we have shunned and strategic thinking we are not capable of.

It doesn’t matter how smart, how charming or how innovative you are.  If you don’t change the way you work to match what is needed, none of that will matter.  The companies that fail have incredible people in them.  But that doesn’t stop the company from the nose dive.  We have all seen brilliant people fail at business – all because they were unwilling to change.

There are four main possible outcomes for you:

1) You don’t change the way you work.  Others do, as does the company.  The company grows and your skills are marginalized along with your paycheck.

2) You don’t change the way you work and neither do your peers in the company.  The company is incapable of following the trends and the company suffers a less than pleasant fate.

3) You upgrade the way you work but your peers do not.  You find a company that is ready to move in the right direction.  You join them and sadly watch your former company fumble.

4) You upgrade the way you work, become a champion and influence your peers to the do the same.  That culture drives the company in the new direction.  You are the hero.

Be the hero.

Pandemic Failure – Failure Unabaited

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A couple weeks ago I gave a keynote speech at the Enterprise 2.0 conference entitled, “Embracing your E2.0 Failures” (watch the video here).  There I talked about three different types of failures, Pandemic, Catastrophic and Intrinsic failure.

At the beginning of the keynote I showed this video I created which exemplifies the most dangerous of the three failures: Pandemic Failure:

[yframe url=’http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=olSIMc4j5Sg’]

Pandemic Failure has three main characteristics:

  1. It runs rampant within a culture.
  2. It is obvious to most within that culture and it is often discussed and complained about.
  3. Rarely does anyone take action to make the needed changes.

This is the most dangerous because bad behavior becomes an acceptable way of working or accomplishing a task.  For example, when was the last time you were in a meeting you didn’t really need to be in, but felt obligated to be there?  You didn’t lend any real advantage to the meeting nor did you take away much.  Not that it was completely worthless – you probably did get some good information out of it – but what you did get was not an hour’s worth of your time.  You could have received it another way in only about a minute’s time.

But we too often work this way and it is acceptable.

Pandemic Failure leads to apathy and diminished effectiveness.  And this is why it is the most dangerous type of failure.  It allows for growth while at the same time stifles it and can bring down whole subsets of cultures.  It gives a false sense of security and at the same time an overall uneasiness.

Overcome Pandemic Failure

How do we overcome pandemic failure.  Like anything else, we first need to recognize it.  Then, we can’t just let it go.  We need to actually do something about it.  And it probably won’t be comfortable because it will be part of the culture.  It will take guts because you are challenging the status quo.  Everyone will be on your side, yet no one may back you.  It will be a very strange situation to be in.

Yet if you let it go, you become a victim of an annoying culture trait.  And I don’t know about you, but any time I become a slave to something that is ineffective, I feel I must change it.

So here is to all you Change Agents!