I don’t fear change, as long as everything stays the same. – Neil Richmund

Fear

Neil was kidding when he said that, but it’s surprising how many business-people and employees really do fear change. For some, “we’ve always done it this way” is an automatic defense against new thinking. It shields them from the horror of having to learn new tricks and *gasp* potentially fail. At least they’ll have someone to blame, because you can be sure they didn’t author or support any attempt at innovation. Of course if something bad happens to the company, they didn’t do that either.

Change

In the situation I just described, innovation is new, scary, and infrequent. But what if you could work in a place where innovation is part of the daily routine, and everyone took responsibility for making improvements? Yes I know Utopia is a fictional place, but if you can embrace changes that make you and others more effective at work, how much more will you enjoy coming to the office?

I’m not claiming that every change is for the better, but you really won’t know until you measure, change, and measure again. Don’t blindly make a change without deciding how you’ll know if it succeeded. And just a little encouragement: If none of your innovations has failed, you aren’t trying hard enough.

Why Now?

Some say that a down economy is the wrong time to be experimenting. Bullshit. As Lorraine Ball says, pull your head out of the sand. This is the best opportunity in a generation to find out what really works. If you can create a culture of innovation today, you’ll profit from it for years to come. While others shoot themselves in the foot by pulling back from Growth Activities, you can change the playing field and blow by them.

Now don’t just stand there. DO something!