Change in Business

Perhaps a good place to begin is by asking the question, what is change? Does a person or a business have to change or can they remain stagnant?

It is a known scientific fact that all of the cells in the human body regenerate themselves about every seven years. Yet is that change? If something replaces something with the same thing, is that change?

One thought is that even though the two entities might be exactly the same, a process has occurred when they switched places. That process was change. Secondly, the new cells are different, not exact replicas of the old cells. Otherwise, how would we account for hair growing gray, wrinkles forming, and all of the other negative signs that tells us we are aging physically?

In business, on the surface, it may perhaps seem easier to remain stagnant. Especially if a rigid, dictatorial leader is at the helm. But, even then employees come and go, and each employee will hear the same order from the boss in a slightly different way. Moreover, the environment outside the business is constantly changing and the business must adapt to these changes.

In business, the bottom line is profit generation. Old methods without attempts at improvement will eventually result in a decrease in profit. The same is true of the individual. If an individual insists upon attempting to remain stagnant, is unwilling to explore new possibilities, or listen to the ideas of others, psychological loss of great magnitude will occur.

Of course, my business is that of “people changing”. By the time people have sought out my help, they have usually tried every possible solution of which they could think to their problem.

What I try to do is to help the clients initiate new behaviors or perhaps merely to change their view of the problem so that it is easier to accept, or perhaps no longer is even viewed as a problem.

An example may help to illustrate this point. Many of my clients come to me depressed due to some loss, or at least some perceived loss. At first, I will offer support and understanding. I can empathize with their pain. I compare it to being in a long, dark tunnel with, at best, only a glimmer of light at what seems to be an unreachable end.

I remind them of the times they have felt down in the past and how that depression changed for the better over time. I tell them that even the step of coming in to see me indicates change and progress.

Dr. Milt Erickson, one of my favorite therapists, stated that any change that can be recognized as a change by the client marks the beginning of a snowball-rolling-down-the-mountain effect. That is, one small change produces subsequent changes of greater and greater magnitude. And when you are hurting, emotionally, if you are an individual, or financially, if you are a business, change is the pathway to progress.

When patients consult me, I expect that they will change. After all, the change began the moment they looked up my number. This strong expectation on my part is a self-fulfilling prophecy that aids them in changing.

I also recognize that, while some behaviors can change quickly and dramatically, deep INTERNAL change requires a great deal of time and many new behaviors have to be repeated over many different situations before they are incorporated into the personality. Thus, what I call second order change occurs slowly.

I like to think of the client I work with as similar to a cruise ship. Now, you can rearrange the deck chairs, tables, etc., paint the ship, and that is a first order change. Or, you can do some extensive (and usually expensive) remodeling of the ship itself. The remodeling of the entire structure of the ship takes a heck of a lot longer, but the differences in the outcomes are much more dramatically apparent, and potentially profitable, than the superficial changes.

Of course, the same analogy applies to a business. If the trouble is due to internal mismanagement to external circumstances, rearranging the deck chairs ain’t going to help.