Do you hate Change?

G’day all

Happy Friday from my home office here in Melbourne!  The weather has even been mocking me the past few days, with some beautiful sunny autumn days, teasing me, that I cannot be out in and enjoying… Well, not completely, but certainly managed a few walks/runs to enjoy the sun – with social distance of course!

Hope you are all coping well at home?  It is a massive change for us all, as essentially social creatures to be now isolated.  I certainly know that we have it fortunate here, as our office is one level of our home anyway, and I have the family here with me, my wife is actually enjoying not having to do the 1.5 hr each way trip to her office at the moment.

I read a quote recently on the big almighty Facebook, that said something along the lines that “us introverts have been preparing for this moment all our lives!” and had to laugh.  As a self-confessed introvert, I certainly resonate with this and am not necessarily feeling isolated, and often enjoy my own space.

This change is all around us at the moment.  And while some are embracing the change, thriving in this uncertain environment, others are scared, unsure, panicking because they crave the ‘normal’, the routine.

I was on a webinar this week, with a colleague of mine that runs one of the most successful online digital marketing business on the west coast, and we were discussing what, as businesses we were doing to adapt, to pivot in these changing times.

We have seen restaurants now develop very successful takeaway and home delivery divisions where they didn’t have one before…

Retailers that may have been slow to develop online sales presence have now moved across and selling more goods online, than they did last month through their store front…

Even hairdressers and beauticians who were predominately face-to-face businesses are finding ways to sell products online, including vouchers for treatments down the track.

I just love seeing the innovation that people are using to change and pivot with the times.

As Charles Darwin said “It’s not the strongest of a species that survives, or the most intelligent, but the ones most adaptable to change.”

And I think now, more than ever, this is so pertinent.

How can you adapt to this change?  What have you been doing previously that is no longer working for you now, and you need to change?

A great little exercise is to take a piece of paper, draw a line down the middle and on the left column, write down all the things that are working well for you, your family or your business right now. 

Then on the right hand column write down the things that are NOT working right now and need to look to change.

This can be a very quick way to see what is going well for you in these crazy times, and want needs to be addressed, what isn’t working.

Then you can focus on looking at ways to change the left hand column, what can you do to adapt

Even if you hate change, you might find that there are more things in the right hand column than you thought there would be – things working well in these changed times.  It might impress you even how much you have adapted already, without conscious thought…

For those of you who have done all your Prosci methodology and other change management tools (the Change Managers will be smiling right now) this will be a time to shine. 

For those of us not so happy with change, you just might surprise yourself actually how good at it you are, and suddenly realise it is not so scary after all

You got this!

Happy Investing all and have a great weekend!!

Cheers

Lindsay