Image courtesy allthingslearning
Way back when (pick your date), senior executives in large companies had a simple goal for themselves and their organizations: stability. Shareholders wanted little more than predictable earnings growth. Because so many markets were either closed or undeveloped, leaders could deliver on those expectations through annual exercises that offered only modest modifications to the strategic plan. Prices stayed in check; people stayed in their jobs; life was good.
Market transparency, labor mobility, global capital flows, and instantaneous communications have blown that comfortable scenario to smithereens. In most industries — and in almost all companies, from giants on down — heightened global competition has concentrated management’s collective mind on something that, in the past, it happily avoided: change. Successful companies, as Harvard Business School professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter told s+b in 1999, develop “a culture that just keeps moving all the time.”
This presents most senior executives with an unfamiliar challenge. In major transformations of large enterprises, they and their advisors conventionally focus their attention on devising the best strategic and tactical plans. But to succeed, they also must have an intimate understanding of the human side of change management — the alignment of the company’s culture, values, people, and behaviors — to encourage the desired results. Plans themselves do not capture value; value is realized only through the sustained, collective actions of the thousands — perhaps the tens of thousands — of employees who are responsible for designing, executing, and living with the changed environment.
Long-term structural transformation has four characteristics: scale (the change affects all or most of the organization), magnitude (it involves significant alterations of the status quo), duration (it lasts for months, if not years), and strategic importance. Yet companies will reap the rewards only when change occurs at the level of the individual employee.
Many senior executives know this and worry about it. When asked what keeps them up at night, CEOs involved in transformation often say they are concerned about how the work force will react, how they can get their team to work together, and how they will be able to lead their people. They also worry about retaining their company’s unique values and sense of identity and about creating a culture of commitment and performance. Leadership teams that fail to plan for the human side of change often find themselves wondering why their best-laid plans have gone awry.
No single methodology fits every company, but there is a set of practices, tools, and techniques that can be adapted to a variety of situations. What follows is a “Top 10” list of guiding principles for change management. Using these as a systematic, comprehensive framework, executives can understand what to expect, how to manage their own personal change, and how to engage the entire organization in the process.
1. Address the “human side” systematically. Any significant transformation creates “people issues.” New leaders will be asked to step up, jobs will be changed, new skills and capabilities must be developed, and employees will be uncertain and resistant. Dealing with these issues on a reactive, case-by-case basis puts speed, morale, and results at risk. A formal approach for managing change — beginning with the leadership team and then engaging key stakeholders and leaders — should be developed early, and adapted often as change moves through the organization. This demands as much data collection and analysis, planning, and implementation discipline as does a redesign of strategy, systems, or processes. The change-management approach should be fully integrated into program design and decision making, both informing and enabling strategic direction. It should be based on a realistic assessment of the organization’s history, readiness, and capacity to change.
2. Start at the top. Because change is inherently unsettling for people at all levels of an organization, when it is on the horizon, all eyes will turn to the CEO and the leadership team for strength, support, and direction. The leaders themselves must embrace the new approaches first, both to challenge and to motivate the rest of the institution. They must speak with one voice and model the desired behaviors. The executive team also needs to understand that, although its public face may be one of unity, it, too, is composed of individuals who are going through stressful times and need to be supported.
Executive teams that work well together are best positioned for success. They are aligned and committed to the direction of change, understand the culture and behaviors the changes intend to introduce, and can model those changes themselves. At one large transportation company, the senior team rolled out an initiative to improve the efficiency and performance of its corporate and field staff before addressing change issues at the officer level. The initiative realized initial cost savings but stalled as employees began to question the leadership team’s vision and commitment. Only after the leadership team went through the process of aligning and committing to the change initiative was the work force able to deliver downstream results.
3. Involve every layer. As transformation programs progress from defining strategy and setting targets to design and implementation, they affect different levels of the organization. Change efforts must include plans for identifying leaders throughout the company and pushing responsibility for design and implementation down, so that change “cascades” through the organization. At each layer of the organization, the leaders who are identified and trained must be aligned to the company’s vision, equipped to execute their specific mission, and motivated to make change happen.
A major multiline insurer with consistently flat earnings decided to change performance and behavior in preparation for going public. The company followed this “cascading leadership” methodology, training and supporting teams at each stage. First, 10 officers set the strategy, vision, and targets. Next, more than 60 senior executives and managers designed the core of the change initiative. Then 500 leaders from the field drove implementation. The structure remained in place throughout the change program, which doubled the company’s earnings far ahead of schedule. This approach is also a superb way for a company to identify its next generation of leadership.
4. Make the formal case. Individuals are inherently rational and will question to what extent change is needed, whether the company is headed in the right direction, and whether they want to commit personally to making change happen. They will look to the leadership for answers. The articulation of a formal case for change and the creation of a written vision statement are invaluable opportunities to create or compel leadership-team alignment.
Three steps should be followed in developing the case: First, confront reality and articulate a convincing need for change. Second, demonstrate faith that the company has a viable future and the leadership to get there. Finally, provide a road map to guide behavior and decision making. Leaders must then customize this message for various internal audiences, describing the pending change in terms that matter to the individuals.
A consumer packaged-goods company experiencing years of steadily declining earnings determined that it needed to significantly restructure its operations — instituting, among other things, a 30 percent work force reduction — to remain competitive. In a series of offsite meetings, the executive team built a brutally honest business case that downsizing was the only way to keep the business viable, and drew on the company’s proud heritage to craft a compelling vision to lead the company forward. By confronting reality and helping employees understand the necessity for change, leaders were able to motivate the organization to follow the new direction in the midst of the largest downsizing in the company’s history. Instead of being shell-shocked and demoralized, those who stayed felt a renewed resolve to help the enterprise advance.
5. Create ownership. Leaders of large change programs must overperform during the transformation and be the zealots who create a critical mass among the work force in favor of change. This requires more than mere buy-in or passive agreement that the direction of change is acceptable. It demands ownership by leaders willing to accept responsibility for making change happen in all of the areas they influence or control. Ownership is often best created by involving people in identifying problems and crafting solutions. It is reinforced by incentives and rewards. These can be tangible (for example, financial compensation) or psychological (for example, camaraderie and a sense of shared destiny).
At a large health-care organization that was moving to a shared-services model for administrative support, the first department to create detailed designs for the new organization was human resources. Its personnel worked with advisors in cross-functional teams for more than six months. But as the designs were being finalized, top departmental executives began to resist the move to implementation. While agreeing that the work was top-notch, the executives realized they hadn’t invested enough individual time in the design process to feel the ownership required to begin implementation. On the basis of their feedback, the process was modified to include a “deep dive.” The departmental executives worked with the design teams to learn more, and get further exposure to changes that would occur. This was the turning point; the transition then happened quickly. It also created a forum for top executives to work as a team, creating a sense of alignment and unity that the group hadn’t felt before.
6. Communicate the message. Too often, change leaders make the mistake of believing that others understand the issues, feel the need to change, and see the new direction as clearly as they do. The best change programs reinforce core messages through regular, timely advice that is both inspirational and practicable. Communications flow in from the bottom and out from the top, and are targeted to provide employees the right information at the right time and to solicit their input and feedback. Often this will require overcommunication through multiple, redundant channels.
In the late 1990s, the commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service, Charles O. Rossotti, had a vision: The IRS could treat taxpayers as customers and turn a feared bureaucracy into a world-class service organization. Getting more than 100,000 employees to think and act differently required more than just systems redesign and process change. IRS leadership designed and executed an ambitious communications program including daily voice mails from the commissioner and his top staff, training sessions, videotapes, newsletters, and town hall meetings that continued through the transformation. Timely, constant, practical communication was at the heart of the program, which brought the IRS’s customer ratings from the lowest in various surveys to its current ranking above the likes of McDonald’s and most airlines.
7. Assess the cultural landscape. Successful change programs pick up speed and intensity as they cascade down, making it critically important that leaders understand and account for culture and behaviors at each level of the organization. Companies often make the mistake of assessing culture either too late or not at all. Thorough cultural diagnostics can assess organizational readiness to change, bring major problems to the surface, identify conflicts, and define factors that can recognize and influence sources of leadership and resistance. These diagnostics identify the core values, beliefs, behaviors, and perceptions that must be taken into account for successful change to occur. They serve as the common baseline for designing essential change elements, such as the new corporate vision, and building the infrastructure and programs needed to drive change.
8. Address culture explicitly. Once the culture is understood, it should be addressed as thoroughly as any other area in a change program. Leaders should be explicit about the culture and underlying behaviors that will best support the new way of doing business, and find opportunities to model and reward those behaviors. This requires developing a baseline, defining an explicit end-state or desired culture, and devising detailed plans to make the transition.
Company culture is an amalgam of shared history, explicit values and beliefs, and common attitudes and behaviors. Change programs can involve creating a culture (in new companies or those built through multiple acquisitions), combining cultures (in mergers or acquisitions of large companies), or reinforcing cultures (in, say, long-established consumer goods or manufacturing companies). Understanding that all companies have a cultural center — the locus of thought, activity, influence, or personal identification — is often an effective way to jump-start culture change.
A consumer goods company with a suite of premium brands determined that business realities demanded a greater focus on profitability and bottom-line accountability. In addition to redesigning metrics and incentives, it developed a plan to systematically change the company’s culture, beginning with marketing, the company’s historical center. It brought the marketing staff into the process early to create enthusiasts for the new philosophy who adapted marketing campaigns, spending plans, and incentive programs to be more accountable. Seeing these culture leaders grab onto the new program, the rest of the company quickly fell in line.
9. Prepare for the unexpected. No change program goes completely according to plan. People react in unexpected ways; areas of anticipated resistance fall away; and the external environment shifts. Effectively managing change requires continual reassessment of its impact and the organization’s willingness and ability to adopt the next wave of transformation. Fed by real data from the field and supported by information and solid decision-making processes, change leaders can then make the adjustments necessary to maintain momentum and drive results.
A leading U.S. health-care company was facing competitive and financial pressures from its inability to react to changes in the marketplace. A diagnosis revealed shortcomings in its organizational structure and governance, and the company decided to implement a new operating model. In the midst of detailed design, a new CEO and leadership team took over. The new team was initially skeptical, but was ultimately convinced that a solid case for change, grounded in facts and supported by the organization at large, existed. Some adjustments were made to the speed and sequence of implementation, but the fundamentals of the new operating model remained unchanged.
10. Speak to the individual. Change is both an institutional journey and a very personal one. People spend many hours each week at work; many think of their colleagues as a second family. Individuals (or teams of individuals) need to know how their work will change, what is expected of them during and after the change program, how they will be measured, and what success or failure will mean for them and those around them. Team leaders should be as honest and explicit as possible. People will react to what they see and hear around them, and need to be involved in the change process. Highly visible rewards, such as promotion, recognition, and bonuses, should be provided as dramatic reinforcement for embracing change. Sanction or removal of people standing in the way of change will reinforce the institution’s commitment.
Most leaders contemplating change know that people matter. It is all too tempting, however, to dwell on the plans and processes, which don’t talk back and don’t respond emotionally, rather than face up to the more difficult and more critical human issues. But mastering the “soft” side of change management needn’t be a mystery.
via strategy-business.com
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Jim Woods is principal and founder of InnoThink Group. Jim is a business turnaround expert and personal coach. His story is riveting. He has worked with government, U.S. Army, MITRE Corporation, Pitney Bowes, Whirlpool, and 3M. Jim W experiences, extensive research on competitive strategy and innovation have given him a fresh perspective on improving individual and organizational performance. Jim is a prolific speaker on strategic innovation, creative leadership, uncertainty and competitive strategy. Speak with us for consulting or speaking engagements call 719-266-6703 or click here for more information. Follow Jim on Twitter. Follow Jim on Facebook.
Tuesday, December 11, 2012
10 Principles of Change Management and Innovation for Dummies
Tuesday, May 22, 2012
How to Instantly Become More Confident
Second guessing yourself is a common practice. We walk with our head. Haltingly speak in meetings only to extend more praises to others than to ourselves. We give everyone the benefit of the doubt except the one person needing it most: us.
A few ideas on how to obtain more of the things you want. Ask yourself:
- How would a supremely confident person stand?
- How would a supremely confident person walk?
- How would a supremely confident person sit and enter a room?
- How would a supremely confident person inflect their voice?
- Act as if you already p[possess the habit or behavior.
- If you were absolutely confident what type of resume’ would you submit?
- Associate with people who are confident. Watch how they do it.
- Smile when needed with direct eye contact. This is born more out of self respect than intimidation.
Lastly, when daydreaming, do so in color with emotion. The brain is very active during our daydreaming. The time when we co-create who we are. jim
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Website: InnoThink Group Request a consultation: Office: +1 719.649.4118 or complete our form.Innothink Group is a strategic management, innovation and business coaching consultancy.
Our Guarantee. Where many consulting firms are reluctant to bear risks or tie their rewards to project outcomes, we decided to build a better model. We align our success with yours. We’re outcome obsessed, outcome paid, putting nearly two thirds of our fees at risk subject to hitting predetermined milestones. More than a guarantee we wanted from the outset to create true partnerships with shared responsibility. See a few of our clients.We provide broad ranging advice covering innovation, commoditization, competitive advantage, business policy and strategy, as well as global strategy and implementation.
Monday, May 21, 2012
Being Happy Can be The Hardest Part of Living
Life is unbelievably difficult. We all struggle with self confidence.
We struggle hard to make the grade. And yet, fall short. Finding our footing can take a long time.
For most of my life I attempted in vain to make something meaningful of myself. I failed to keep a job or relationship. My family and friends would say I was disaster prone. One church member proclaimed, “If Jim Woods didn’t have bad luck he wouldn’t have any luck at all.” What he failed to understand was, I didn’t need luck ……. I needed a friend.
Keeping our self image whole as we caution our children is hard in the face of unrelenting pressures to be successful in a way that may not coincide with our internal beliefs.
The key to my self image at a time when it seemed I had little was:
Refusing to define myself in a mold created by circumstances or anyone else.
Not giving in to challenges.
Persistence
Recognizing I had a story I alone must tell
Using my challenges to inspire others.
Everyone has greatness in them
Your time table is different.
We are unique.
Gifts must be shared to be appreciated.
Never to dismiss a thought as a possibility with “I can’t do that.”
I began to see thoughts as God’s way of answering my prayers. Moving confidently in a very different place mentally by moving one foot in front of the other until one day I was at my destination. The ability to keep going became causal to my personal and professional life despite obstacles.
When I see how others fail because they second guess their worth it hurts me. I know if they were speaking to their children their advice would be:
“Try a different way. You can do it.” “I believe in you.”
One of my favorite quotes when speaking is by Theodore Herzl, “If you will it, it is no dream.” Jim
Saturday, April 14, 2012
Life is Hard, Life is Difficult
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My message today is titled Life is hard” and it’s about how to live a great life despite the fact that life is difficult.
Everybody wants to be happy in life. We all want to live a perfect life. We want that great job or a successful business. We want to be married to Mr. Right or Mrs Perfect. We want to have great kids. We want to have friends that stick by us come rain or shine. We want to be able to have all the material things life has to offer and have all our problems just disappear.
Everybody wishes for good life. It may be at different levels. One person may define a good life one way and another may describe it another way. For one person a good life may be just having three meals a day and a roof over their head. For another it may be having a huge mansion and a couple of million dollars in the bank.
There are different levels and meanings to what a good life is. But whatever you definition of it, there is perhaps one thing that you may have in common with many other people. You might want that good life stress free. You would like to have it without having to work so hard or struggle so much for it. That is a normal human expectation. Nobody likes to struggle through life.
Unfortunately, that is also what may be stopping you from having that great life. The thought of all that work, all that planning, overcoming hurdles and resistance is enough to make a lot of people give up before they even start. It can all seem too overwhelming, and for many it all just doesn’t seem be worth it. It’s like being drained of energy just at the thought of running a marathon. Before you are even at the starting line the thought of all that running just scares you and tires you so much mentally you just decide not to go for it. It’s just too hard.
One of my favourite books is titled “The Road Less Travelled” by M. Scott Peck. The first sentence in the book is:
“Life is difficult.”
Now, if you pick up a book and the first thing it tells you is “life is difficult” you may just think “is this book going to get reassuring and encouraging after such a start?But, as Peck goes on to explain, once you accept that life is hard, it no longer becomes an issue that it’s difficult. He says:
“Once we know that life is difficult- once we truly understand and accept it - then life is no longer difficult.”
In life you will have difficulties getting anything you want. It is very rare to get anything in life without some degree of effort. Only if you win the lottery will you have everything without effort, and even then you would have had to go out and buy the lottery ticket anyway so it’s not free at all.
Life is hard – your boss will not always be the nicest person in the world. Your job will have challenges that you did not foresee. Your workmates will sometimes be a pain. You won’t always get the salary and recognition that you want and deserve at work. Your clients may not be the nicest people in the world.
Life is hard – your kids won’t always be the ideal kids you want them to be. Your wife or husband may not be as perfect as you thought they were when you married them – in fact I can guarantee you they are not. Your home may not be the ideal place you would want it to be. You may not the perfect wife or husband that you once thought you were.
Life is hard – running a business is not as easy as you thought it would be. No one is lining up to bring money to your business, even though you are a really nice person and your business has great products to offer.
I could go on and on with these examples, but the bottom line is that “Life is hard.”
I don’t mean to say in all this that you don’t deserve a break. I am not saying that you are not justified in thinking that you deserve more than what you have gotten from life and the world to this point.
I am not saying that you are not justified in feeling the way that you feel. I know you have had it tough at times. I know that at times you feel that it’s all very confusing and just too hard. I mean you have worked very hard. You’ve done all that you possibly could in your life whether it is at work or at home. But things just don’t seem to have worked out as well as you had planned or hoped. It all just seems to have gone wrong and you don’t know or understand how or why.
But that’s okay. It’s normal. That’s what being human is all about. That’s what life is all about. Life is hard. Accept that.
Once you do, you will feel better about your circumstances. Then you won’t think of your situation as anything but what is common to every human being. Then you will think of your situation as a part of life. You will no longer beat yourself up about how bad things are or how you are not doing so well in one area or another. You will realise that you are only human. You make mistakes just like everybody else. You are not perfect just like everybody else.
But don’t stop there. Accepting that life is hard does not mean that you accept every circumstance and simply go with the flow.
You see, there are two sides to this story. There is another side to this coin. On the one side of the coin is where you have the words “life is hard” inscribed, but if you turn that coin over you will five very small but powerful words. They read:
“You can make it better”
That is one of the beautiful things about life. You can make your life better. You have total responsibility for what you do and how you respond to the fact that life is hard. As the now cliché saying goes:“If life hands you lemons, make lemonade.”
Accepting that life is hard comes with accepting that you have the responsibility to make it better. Not only do you have the responsibility to make it better, you have the ability and the power to make it better.
You can make it better – become a better employee and someone worth giving more responsibilities at work. The promotions and the better pay are sure to follow one way or another.
You can make it better – learn how to raise better kids and have a happier home. Become the good husband or wife you would like your spouse to be.
You can make it better – learn how to turn that business around. Gain the extra skills you need to run a successful business.
You see, the only person you have any control over is yourself. You cannot change other people. Let’s take the example of marriage for moment. Notice that I did not say you should turn your husband or spouse into an ideal spouse. I said you should become the ideal husband or wife you want your spouse to be. Then, once you become such a person you may have several choices as to how to relate to your spouse.
Firstly, once you are as near perfect a spouse as anyone can be your husband or wife might see the difference and also decide to change for the better or they may just change naturally as a response to your new attitude. Secondly, if they don’t change, perhaps you will have reached a level of maturity where you are content and satisfied with who they are and their faults no longer bother you. Or thirdly, in some cases, such as in abusive relationships or in relationships that are a risk to your health, you may reach a level of self acceptance and courage where you are able to leave that abusive or unfaithful partner.
Whatever the case may be, this example illustrates one other important fact about teh fact that life is hard and taking responsibility. That is:
“You always have choices”
No matter what situation you are in, you have a choice. No matter how bad things are, you have a choice. No matter what you think you can or cannot do, you have a choice.Now it may not be an easy choice, by any means. It may be a very difficult choice and the road you decide to take may be a tough one. It may push you way out of your comfort zone. It may mean that in the initial period your life may get even harder than it already is. But it is a choice nonetheless.
A lot of times you will actually find that the choices are not as hard as you thought they were. You may just have shut off your mind from seeing those choices and possibilities because you thought you had no choice. Once you become open to the idea that you are responsible for your life and that you have choices, you will find that you are no longer stuck just because life is hard.
At that point, life is still hard, but you have the final say. Your life becomes more meaningful and purposeful.
Want to increase the sustainability of your nnovation initiatives or need a speaker? Want to make the right career move? Contact us or call 719-649-4118.
Jim Woods is president and founder of InnoThink Group. A leading consulting firm specialized solely in enabling organizations of all sizes in all industries develop top line growth through strategic innovation and hypercompetition. Jim has over 25 years consulting experience in working with small, mid size and Fortune 1000 companies. He is a former U.S. Navy Seabee and grandfather of five.
Jim is also a business and personal coach. Providing confidential advice on empowerment and making the right career choices in an age of accelerated competition. He can help you achieve your goals.
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Wednesday, April 4, 2012
Learning to Speak Up and Get What You Want
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Illustration: Guy BilloutHanging back, dropping hints, and generally mousing around gets you nowhere and drives other people nuts. Here's what you should do instead.
"I want my husband to have more sex with me," a girlfriend remarks at lunch. "I feel like he rarely initiates it, and I want to do it more often."
"Did you tell him how you feel?" I ask, after the waiters have administered strong smelling salts and propped me back in my chair. "Don't you think that the first step might be saying that to him instead of me?"
"Honestly, I could never," she responds. "He would assume I was dissatisfied or accuse me of being a nag. But I've been buying lots of silk lingerie and sheer little nighties and making sure I look my best at bedtime, hoping to pique his interest. Besides, it's not like I necessarily want to have more sex per se, I just want him to want me to."
Right. So, she wants sex, but she doesn't want it. She merely wants her husband to want it so she can get what she wants—which, perversely, is something she doesn't particularly want. Wouldn't it cost less, both in mental and actual currency, if she were to sit out the dance, look him plain in the eye, and speak her mind? Why can't she say what she wants?
She's afraid that people will label her needy, bitchy, clingy, whiny. In other words, wanty. Wanty (known in Italy as volere, on New York's shrink-saturated Upper West Side as the id) is the hobgoblin who scrambles the signals so that wanting becomes a bad thing instead of a way to move forward. His cohorts are guilt and denial; his ace up the sleeve is fear of rejection.
What if I look stupid?
What if the answer is no?
What if, what if? So goes Wanty's refrain.
Wanty should not be confused with pure Want. Pure Want is the essence of living. It's the human condition, the slender quill that pricks the sectors of the soul, stimulating yearning or envy, desire or desperation. Nor should Wanty be mistaken for his cousin, Wishy, who pines for a more unattainable horizon and subsists on fountains glutted with coins, birthday candles, and the sternum bones of most poultry. Incidentally—spoiler alert—whoever grasps the wishbone higher up toward the joint will always win.
Wanty looks daggers at Wish and Want and shames them into silence. He flicks open the refrigerator door and slams it shut, thumbs through your credit card statements reproachfully, reaches out and shakes up your mind, juddering friendly old desires into unrecognizable enemies.
Do we even allow ourselves to know what we want?
"Where should we go for dinner?" I ask my husband.
"Wherever you want," he says.
I suggest a nice barbecue place around the corner. No, he says, he doesn't feel like barbecue. Chinese? No, he had Chinese food for lunch. Italian? No, too heavy. Thai? Too much like Chinese. Where, then, I repeat, does he want to go for dinner?
"I dunno. Wherever you want."
Kill me now.
It wasn't always this way.
Sunday, April 1, 2012
Find Your Rich and Rewarding Life: The Hidden Side of Happiness
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Photo courtesy of marilonge.blogspot.com
Those who weather adversity well are living proof of one of the paradoxes of happiness: We need more than pleasure to live the best possible life. Our contemporary quest for happiness has shriveled to a hunt for bliss—a life protected from bad feelings, free from pain and confusion.
This anodyne definition of well-being leaves out the better half of the story, the rich, full joy that comes from a meaningful life. It is the dark matter of happiness, the ineffable quality we admire in wise men and women and aspire to cultivate in our own lives. It turns out that some of the people who have suffered the most, who have been forced to contend with shocks they never anticipated and to rethink the meaning of their lives, may have the most to tell us about that profound and intensely fulfilling journey that philosophers used to call the search for "the good life."
This broader definition of good living blends deep satisfaction and a profound connection to others through empathy. It is dominated by happy feelings but seasoned also with nostalgia and regret. "Happiness is only one among many values in human life," contends Laura King, a psychologist at the University of Missouri in Columbia. Compassion, wisdom, altruism, insight, creativity—sometimes only the trials of adversity can foster these qualities, because sometimes only drastic situations can force us to take on the painful process of change. To live a full human life, a tranquil, carefree existence is not enough. We also need to grow—and sometimes growing hurts.
In a dark room in Queens, New York, 31-year-old fashion designer Tracy Cyr believed she was dying. A few months before, she had stopped taking the powerful immune-suppressing drugs that kept her arthritis in check. She never anticipated what would happen: a withdrawal reaction that eventually left her in total body agony and neurological meltdown. The slightest movement—trying to swallow, for example—was excruciating. Even the pressure of her cheek on the pillow was almost unbearable.
Cyr is no wimp—diagnosed with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis at the age of 2, she'd endured the symptoms and the treatments (drugs, surgery) her whole life. But this time, she was way past her limits, and nothing her doctors did seemed to help. Either the disease was going to kill her or, pretty soon, she'd have to kill herself.
As her sleepless nights wore on, though, her suicidal thoughts began to be interrupted by new feelings of gratitude. She was still in agony, but a new consciousness grew stronger each night: an awesome sense of liberation, combined with an all-encompassing feeling of sympathy and compassion. "I felt stripped of everything I'd ever identified myself with," she said six months later. "Everything I thought I'd known or believed in was useless—time, money, self-image, perceptions. Recognizing that was so freeing."
Within a few months, she began to be able to move more freely, thanks to a cocktail of steroids and other drugs. But as her physical strength came back, she did not return to her old way of being as a feisty, demanding, "Sex-in-the-City, three-inch-stilettos-and-fishnets" girl. Now quieter and more tolerant, she makes a point of being submissive in a turn-the-other-cheek kind of way. Cyr still takes a pharmacopoeia of drugs every day, but she says there's no question that her life is better now. "I felt I had been shown the secret of life and why we're here: to be happy and to nurture other life. It's that simple."
Her mind-blowing experience came as a total surprise. But that feeling of transformation is in some ways typical, says Rich Tedeschi, a professor of psychology at the University of North Carolina in Charlotte who coined the term "post-traumatic growth." His studies of people who have endured extreme events like combat, violent crime or sudden serious illness show that most feel dazed and anxious in the immediate aftermath. They are preoccupied with the idea that their lives have been shattered. A few are haunted long afterward by memory problems, sleep trouble and similar symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. But Tedeschi and others have found that for many people—perhaps even the majority—life ultimately becomes richer and more gratifying.
Sometimes, as with Cyr, the change hits like a bolt of lightning. W. Keith Campbell, a professor of social psychology at the University of Georgia in Athens whose research focuses on the self, calls this phenomenon "ego shock." He has found that a serious blow to self-esteem can temporarily freeze normal psychological protective mechanisms. The way we react to a sudden ego threat (a public rejection, a professional failure) is often to go numb: Just for an instant, time stops, the mind goes blank and the world suddenly seems unfamiliar.
Campbell believes something similar happens to many people who experience a terrifying physical threat. In that moment, our sense of invulnerability is pierced, and the self-protective mental armor that normally stands between us and our perceptions of the world is torn away. Our everyday life scripts—our habits, self-perceptions and assumptions—go out the window, and we're left with a raw experience of the world.
The phenomenon is akin to what Zen Buddhists strive to attain in meditation or what people report about religious rapture. Colors become more vivid; ordinary objects seem suddenly beautiful. It's an experience of sublime bewilderment tinged with fear—the old-fashioned meaning of awe. "When you take the self out of the picture, sometimes the world emerges as more powerful, as wondrous," he says. "It's this opening experience: 'Oh my god, look at this world.'"
In her moment of desperation, Tracy Cyr was struck by this feeling of euphoria. "You see the truth of things, and you can't help but be in wonder, in glorious wonder," she says. "Everything is OK. Everything is perfect and good. There's absolutely nothing to fear."
After such a shock, people often say that their lives are transformed involuntarily and that their old values or habits evaporate in an instant. Campbell found that more than half of the people in his studies who had experienced an ego shock said that it ultimately had positive long-term effects upon their lives. "Really negative events have the ability to shake up the status quo in your life, which opens the door for change," says Campbell. "You could become a depressed, despairing drunk—or you could become a much better person."
Still, actually implementing these changes, as well as fully coming to terms with the new reality, usually takes conscious effort. Being willing and able to take on this process is one of the major differences between those who grow through adversity and those who are destroyed by it.
Crises challenge our deepest beliefs: that bad things don't happen to good people, that life makes sense, that we have control over what happens. Tedeschi describes them as seismic, because they overturn basic assumptions upon which life is built. Afterward, a new framework must be constructed. "That's no small thing," he observes. "It requires some people to make big changes not only in how they think but in what they do and in how they choose to live." Brooding over what happened—in other circumstances a dangerous warning sign of depression—may actually be essential to the process of growth.
Notably, the people who find value in adversity aren't the toughest or the most rational. Instead, they tend to be ordinary—neither the best- nor the worst-adjusted. What makes them different is that they are able to incorporate what happened into the story of their own life. They are willing to undertake the painful process of rethinking who they are and giving up an old script that no longer applies. "Maybe one of the keys [to growth] is the capacity to admit that you've been changed by experience," says King. "Which means admitting that you're vulnerable, and admitting that there would have been good things about your life if you hadn't had to go through those negative events."
Eventually, they may find themselves freed in ways they never imagined. Survivors often say they become more tolerant and forgiving of others, capable of bringing peace to formerly troubled relationships. They say that material ambitions suddenly seem silly and the pleasures of friends and family paramount—and that the crisis allowed them to reorganize life in line with the new priorities.
For Arizona senator John McCain, a terrible experience gave him one lasting benefit: confidence in his own priorities. Captured in the Vietnam War, he spent five years as a prisoner of war, enduring torture and solitary confinement. 30 years later, he has a reputation as a maverick who is willing to take a stand. "In my case, what made life easier is that I now know the difference between what's important and what isn't," he says. "That is a gift: having the confidence to know that you clearly see the difference between right and wrong, between principle and pragmatism." His book Character Is Destiny profiles a procession of historical figures—from Sojourner Truth to Winston Churchill—who he believes exemplify this quality.
People who have grown from adversity often feel much less fear, despite the frightening things they've been through. They are surprised by their own strength, confident that they can handle whatever else life throws at them. Like Tracy Cyr, many also feel transformed by a sense of deep compassion for and connection to others that is intensely rewarding on its own.
"People don't say that what they went through was wonderful," says Tedeschi. "They weren't meaning to grow from it. They were just trying to survive. But in retrospect, what they gained was more than they ever anticipated."
A balance between regret and contentment appears elsewhere as a hallmark of successful survival. Psychologist Jack Bauer, of Northern Arizona University, and Columbia's Bonanno interviewed people six months after they had lost a spouse in midlife and tallied the number of positive and negative comments each person made about the lost relationship. Those who initially generated about five upbeat remarks for each critical comment adapted best and were functioning most smoothly two years later. People who had only negative things to say were not doing so well—but neither were those with only positive assessments.
The widows and widowers who ultimately adjusted best to loss were those who could admit to the difficulty and sadness of the situation without being overwhelmed by it. "It's a growth-oriented attitude," says Bauer. "It allows you to take into consideration life's difficulties, while keeping in mind the rosier big picture."
The capacity to simultaneously embrace both loss and growth is an ordinary part of life—a complex, poignant emotional state that is perhaps the greatest reward of maturity. "Even positive memories of the past are bittersweet," says Laura King. "My little boy is now two years old, and I can already see his babyness slipping away. There's an incredible richness and warmth about those memories—but also sadness, knowing that they're tied to a particular time in your life and that you'll never have those experiences again."
Ultimately, that emotional reward can compensate for the pain and difficulty of adversity. This perspective does not cancel out what happened, but it puts it all in a different context: that it's possible to live an extraordinarily rewarding life even within the constraints and struggles we face. In some form or other, says King, we all must go through this realization. "You're not going to be the person you thought you were, but here's who you are going to be instead—and that turns out to be a pretty great life." via psychologytoday.com
Jim Woods is president and founder of InnoThink Group. He is a consultant, coach, as well as a motivational and business speaker on creative leadership, innovation, business growth, competiveness, and education. A global management consulting firms specialized solely in helping organizations of all sizes in all industries catalyzing top line growth through strategic innovation and hypercompetition. Jim has over 25 years consulting experience in working with small, mid size and Fortune 1000 companies. He is a former U.S. Navy Seabee and grandfather of five. Jim is board president of a charter school designed to educate students on releavnt 21st Century skills including entrepreneurialism. To arrange for Jim to speak at your next event or devise an effective hypercompetition strategy email or call us at 719-649-4118 for availability. Subscribe to our free innovation and competitive advantage newsletter. Don't miss a single new business idea!
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Friday, March 30, 2012
Jim Rohn - The Day That Turns Your Life (and business) Around
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Jim Woods is president and founder of InnoThink Group. A global management consulting firms specialized solely in helping organizations of all sizes in all industries catalyzing top line growth through strategic innovation and hypercompetition. Jim has over 25 years consulting experience in working with small, mid size and Fortune 1000 companies. He is a former U.S. Navy Seabee and grandfather of five. To arrange for Jim to speak at your next event or devise an effective hypercompetition strategy email or call us at 719-649-4118 for availability. Subscribe to our free innovation and competitive advantage newsletter. Don't miss a single new business idea!
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Monday, March 26, 2012
Sarah Ban Breathnach: Savoring Life and Overcoming
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