The Sixth Sense

Back where you started

Have you ever embarked on a journey into the unknown to leave your present circumstances behind, only, before long, to find yourself right back where you started?

You head off into a new future, leaving the past behind. You’ve reached desperation point and you’ve simply had to make a move. New job. New city. New partner. New anything.

At first it all seems fantastic. Life is fresh. Circumstances seem so much better. You’re no longer around those people who annoyed you so much. There’s no boredom from driving down the same city streets on route to work. Everything is perfect.

And then it isn’t. The dream starts to become a reality. The people conflicts you’d fled from find new life with the new people in your life. The new city isn’t perfect after all. Work is still work wherever you are.

Before you know it either circumstances or choices slowly (or sometimes rapidly) lead you ‘home’.

The wonderful thing is that back ‘home’ everything is better. The problems which before seemed insurmountable now feel manageable. People who were grating are enjoyable again. Your city feels like your city again.

But nothing fundamentally has changed. Nothing that is except you.

What do you think?

Tags: Change, Choices, Journey, Life

Implementing change

The world we live in is constantly changing. As a result, the businesses, organisations, churches, etc, we are part of also need to be constantly changing. This is becoming an increasingly prevalent issue as the speed of change continues to increase.

This begs the question of how do we go about building flexible and adaptable organisations that are able to change in order to stay relevant to the changing world outside.

I was reading a great article in the Harvard Business Review entitled: Leading Change: Why Transformation Efforts Fail (subscription required for full article). The article by John Kotter lists eight reasons for failing to implement change. I’ll mention just the first one today: Transformation efforts fail because of a failure to establish a great enough sense of urgency.

The article then quotes someone who said the purpose of establishing a sense of urgency is “to make the status quo seem more dangerous than launching into the unknown.”

This really makes sense. If people don’t sense how important it is for the change to occur, why would anyone be motivated to get onboard?

Have you had experiences of trying to implement change in a team you lead or an organisation you’re part of? How was it? What did you learn?

Tags: Change, Leadership