Change occurs when the pain of staying the same is greater than the pain of change… never before, at least in my generation, have these words had such a deep and profound meaning as they do today. The events over the past six months have created so much pain that change isn’t even an option, it’s the only way forward.
As the leader of a global company I have the unique pleasure of speaking with many executives and practitioners from all around the world. And it doesn’t matter what country or industry, they are all saying the same thing - To survive, they have no option but to change, change how their business operates, how their people do their jobs, how they sell, and even adjust the products or service they sell. Most of this change centers around five core areas;
Learning how to work virtually
Operating while embracing new safety rules and practices
Learning how to sell virtually
Raising awareness of and enforcing equal opportunity
Understanding how to deal with delicate and sensitive customer situations
These five areas touch and affect almost every function, every job and every person in a company. At the same time, companies are also dealing with cost containment while they cope with enormous reductions in revenue.
So the question everyone is asking themselves is not “should we change?“, but “how do we change?” How can change be made quickly, efficiently and effectively while dealing with limited budgets? On top of it all that, the challenge of training all these people virtually, when the majority of training for change happened in a classroom and online training is simply not effective. And no one wants to attend a virtual meeting all day listening to someone explain the new way they need to work.
In short, we have to change the way we influence change in companies. We need a paradigm shift in how to communicate, education and rollout change.