NO CAN DO CREATES CAN DO
Change can be powerful and profitable. To keep your business profitable, you must change things occasionally. Ignoring the need for change is a big mistake. Just ask the Swiss watchmakers. They did not want to change, and digital technology made them obsolete.
One aspect of change that we often overlook, yet is fundamentally important, is the issue of control. Quite simply, some changes you can control and some changes you cannot control. Understanding this dynamic is vital to making the smartest business and personal decisions.
Too often, change itself overwhelms people and they miss that powerful insight. If you miss that insight, then you will approach all change the same way. That is a mistake. Although all change is approached in similar fashion, a change you can control is approached in some different ways than a change you cannot control.
If the change is something over which you have no control, then your options are limited yet defined more clearly. Once you understand what you cannot do, then by default, you know what you can do. This is where a strong dose of the glass-half-full philosophy is needed. Regardless of how limited you may believe your options are, the fact remains you do have some.
In these scenarios, you must discipline yourself to describe in detail exactly what your options are. You may need to call in another associate or a trusted friend to help with this task. Sometimes, when confronted by change over which we have no control, we can lose perspective. An alternate or outsider opinion can help.
Once you have identified your options, the next step is to evaluate critically each one for validity and efficacy. Once you understand how valid and how effective each option is, then it is a relatively easy matter of prioritizing them to support a successful change-navigation strategy. And by the time you’ve done all that, you realize that in some ways you had more control than you thought.
