"Don't be frightened of new ideas. Be fearful of your fear of them!" - Futurist Jim Carroll
Today's post is a bit short. I'm down in Orlando where just after 8 am, I'll be the General Session keynote speaker for CattleCon 2024. There are about 3,000 cattle and dairy ranchers around for the event. It should be fun!
I took a brief tour of the trade show floor and had to rest my weary bones for a moment. (-;
It’s once been said that the only person who likes change is a wet baby. That much might be true.
Change comes from the introduction of new ideas, new concepts, and new ways of doing things. And it is certainly true that different people have different negative attitudes concerning change. Perhaps a small minority embrace it, always viewing it as an opportunity to be chased. Yet many more view it with trepidation, knowing that whatever change they face will cause them a lot of grief, extra work, and new complex realities to managers. Others with it with frustration - “Do we need to go through this again?” And then some view any forthcoming change with weary acceptance. “Wow, am I tired of this!”
And then some recoil in fear, hide with mortal terror, and do everything to deny the reality of what comes next because what it represents is just too horrifying to think about! For this group, fear and change go together like a glove. The scope of the latter feeds the growth of the former until they find themselves in a state of paralysis.
Whichever person you are, stopping every once in a while to think through how you are reacting to and managing change is a helpful and useful exercise.
In my case, talking about the future has me talking about change - and from one perspective, it's been a crazy job to talk to people about the future because many fear what it represents! And in fact, I've discovered along the way that many people simply don't like the future - because it represents change and disruption, and will almost certainly cause havoc and upheaval in their life. The result is that they treat it with a negative or dismissive attitude, which never works out well - they fall behind. Or worse yet, in these modern times, they make up a wild, insane conspiracy theory to try to do away with it. Corporate HR departments today will have their hands full with a new sort of aptitude test: are you crazy, or not?
When it comes to this quixotic battle against the future, there isn't much these naysayers can do to stop it - they can only align with it and work within the context of what it represents. Jobs are going to change, careers are going to transform, skills are going to evolve, business models are going to disrupt, companies are going to evolve - and tomorrow is going to be a different day.
Your choice is whether you want to be a part of it.
You can try to choose to battle against what comes next - or you can choose to accept it, work with it, shape it - and turn it to your advantage. And at the heart of it, that means accepting the new ideas that lie underneath change. Don't fear those ideas. Fear the fear that you might have from them.
Remember - my key mantra has long been this: Some people see the future and see a threat. Innovators see the same future and see an opportunity!
Futurist Jim Carroll's kids laugh at him at times, as he admits to sometimes struggling with small amounts of change.