This week. Thursday the I facilitated a mini-workshop with an
important product area at work, and we were looking at whether we are doing
enough to grab the opportunities that are possible. Before I began my input, I
asked my colleagues to reflect on any change that had taken place in my
country. Of course, everyone could remember that the previous evening a
President resigned, and on the day we met, our Parliament would later be electing
a new President.
I then asked my colleagues what are the implications of the
changes taking place to the business we were looking at. It was much harder to
start. With probing, and allowing all of us to make mistakes, the answers
started coming think and fast. One colleague admitted that she had not
considered that these changes have anything to do with her business. But when
she listened to all the different answers, she could see how her business could
be impacted. And the powerful observation she made was that, because she gets
so busy with the DOING, she does not do enough of the THINKING and REFLECTION
that could make her see what are the implications of things happening around her.
I then moved and asked that people reflect what the changes
could mean for themselves as individuals. And in this article that is where I
want to place emphasis. We tend to exist in the environment and adopt a posture
of people who are recipients of what happens. And it may be possible that we
may not always be able to influence what happens. But certainly we have a lot
of power to decide on our response to what happens and to the changes around
us. But in that little exercise I realised two of the major inhibitors that
cause us not to do that.
The first is in that powerful observation that my colleague made.
We need to spend time thinking and reflecting on what we see. That requires
that we get out of the noise of the present, and observe what we see is
happening, rather than always occupying our minds and time with doing. This is
because when the changes happen, we end up being surprised because we had not
prepared our minds enough for them. Even in the examples I made, because there
was a perception that the previous President could never resign, the relevant
individuals in that room had not spent time thinking about the implications of
the person resigning.
The second inhibitor is that we sometimes see the changes as
things that exist in the abstract, and we are not players in them. When they happen,
we think all we need to do is continue with what we were doing before. At an
individual level, we never ask enough of their meaning for each one of us. Again
taking the example of the change to a new President, with a different style and
responding to new demands in society, very few of us will say what
opportunities does this new environment provide at an individual level. When this
President quotes a song that has a phrase “SEND ME”, we never sit and think what
new avenues does this open that were closed before. We never ask what new
skills will be needed that we may have but never had the chance to use.
I use the above examples merely to illustrate the importance
of observing change, and responding to it in a way that ensures that one advances
their interest. A critical skill that we need to develop there is something I learn
from a marketing professor. He said, in the context of business leaders, it was
important for them to have a peripheral vision, and the ability to detect the
weak signals that could impact one’s business. Paraphrasing this to that of the
individual, and again using the examples we have cited here, it could be argued
that long before the actual events, there was a period of six weeks in the
country where there were signals that the old would be replaced by the new.
Most of us did not know the exact timing, but we certainly knew of the
possibility.
Those who have a better head start of responding to this
change are those who factored the potential for it, and started thinking about
the opportunities that might arise should the changes occur. Of course, if
nothing had changed they could still have continued on the path they were on. What
is certainly not a good building block is to deny oneself the time to reflect, think
and observe what is happening, and then also have a plan to respond to changes
that occur.
Otherwise what one gets is nothing but missed opportunities.
And I am sure there are many reading this who do not want to belong to that
group.
Think, reflect, observe and act on changes around you.
Opportunities beckon.
