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 Name of weekly column: Purple Patch
Name of this weeks contributor: Jodi Goldman, communications manager, learnpurple
I was sitting in my MD’s office the other day and she was on the phone to someone discussing a meeting she had recently attended. I heard her say: “well, they always call me in when it’s already gone wrong and I have to sort it out…” And it got me thinking about my boiler. Weird, but give me a chance to explain...
My boiler is making this funny noise, and the hot water will occasionally start sputtering and shoot out water hotter then magma. I have left it, I’m hoping it won’t get worse, or better yet it will just go away and stop doing that! What’s more then likely going to happen is either me or my partner are going to get 3rd degree burns or it will stop working all together and we will be taking cold miserable showers.
Who moved my cheese?
I deliver a change management course based around Who Moved My Cheese? An Amazing Way to Deal with Change in Your Work and in Your Life, published in 1998. It’s a motivational book by Spencer Johnson written in the style of a parable. It describes change in one's work and life, and four typical reactions to said change with two mice, two "little people", and their hunts for cheese. A New York Times business bestseller since release, Who Moved My Cheese? has remained on the list for almost five years and has spent over two hundred weeks on Publishers Weekly's hardcover nonfiction list. So, its an oldie, but a goodie.
Warning signals for change
So I couldn’t help but smile to myself as I was suddenly stuck but how much people (myself included) do in fact battle with change at the most basic level…we refuse to aknowledge it happening. Businesses don’t just stop working over night, people don’t suddenly leave, relationships don’t just end and boilers don’t just stop working. There are signs. There are warning signals. The cheese gets mouldy (read the book!). And we are too scared, too proud, too lazy, or too preoccupied to notice (or admit it, some of the time).
How to manage change
So instead of waiting until things go pearshaped, or instead of wasting time doing things again and again that clearly aren't working, take time to sit and review often so that you can assertain – is this still working? Are things changing? What can I do about it now?
Key things to remember are that:
• things change, its garanteed
• we need to be ready for things to change by reviewing constantly
• not to get complacent
• change is about new opportunities so welcome it
• the sooner you aknowledge the change the sooner you can find a way around it!
So, I don’t know about you but I am getting a number for a plumber to come and sort the boiler out. Do you have any examples of how something has changed and you battled to accept it? Or any examples of how something has changed and you should have seen it coming? Or maybe you can share some ways or methods of how you have managed changes within your organisation?
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