What To Do When Your Business Is Changed?

The station was eerily quiet.
The train deserted.
Winding our way through the countryside and into and through the city.
Gleaming glass towers, once home to bustling business, now quiet.
Places built for people, naked.

Last Thursday. 8.42am.

The world is definitely changed. Either permanently or temporarily. We’ll see.

A lot of ideas are being challenged, changed. This is happening on a macro, city scale and a micro business scale too.

What to do when everything that was important about your business changes?

Well, you can throw in the towel.

Or you can adapt, evolve, make a creative leap.

When we let go of the ‘how’; how we used to run our businesses and do our work and think instead of the change we were intent on making, we might find the ‘how’ is less important.

Whether we’re sitting atop a big company or small, the trap is holding onto ideas which are fading to irrelevance. And everything is always losing relevance; ideas, assumptions, thoughts, made outdated by shifting and changing contexts, markets. Normally - or, often - this happens slowly, imperceptibly. Sometimes this happens quickly. Like now.

Irrespective, the trap is in our minds. The glue to the old is less about the structures and formality of the business we run; the constraint is in our minds.

So, when a change is demanded, where to and how?

Start with the questions: what is the change I seek to make? Whose life do I seek to impact? How might their lives be improved as a consequence?

When we come back to these most fundamental questions, the ‘how’ of our work is less important. It is certainly less of a constraint. We might find myriad ways to deliver value.

Better yet, don’t wait for the ‘earthquake moment’. Remember, change is always happening. Practise it. Always.

Being change ready is about being good at letting things go.

We don’t like letting things go because we’re scared and worried what will happen as a consequence, so we hold on.

Practise letting things go, all the time. Letting them go when they feel good. You’ll find too that in letting things go something else happens.

Letting go invites creativity. We are full of ideas, adaptable potential. We just need to invite it; we need to work it. It’s a muscle.

Change feels worryingly real for many right now.

If that’s you, start by going back to the first principles; who are you seeking to change / help / improve? Let the how follow.

And if things feel stable for you, don’t be fooled. Your shit show is coming. Maybe soon, Maybe not.

Practise, don’t wait. Build change and letting go into your day-to-day.

What will you let go this week?