Change Or Decay?

"Change is the law of life and those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future." —John F. Kennedy

Here’s an exercise anyone can do. Count the number of times in a week you hear someone say, or allude to, either, “That’s how we do it here,” or “It’s the way we’ve always done it.”

It’s easy to do, because we’ve all found things that work for us, some of which have delivered huge success in the past. It’s common to want to stick with something that has worked in the past, especially when it’s made you what you are today. But it’s also dangerous, because what made you a success today won’t make you a success tomorrow. Everything about us is moving at such a speed that “common wisdom” is being replaced on a monthly basis. The worst part is we have to decipher what seems to be coming from what will be coming.

I remember what the sales manager at the first station I programmed said to me, “The only constant is change.” I sort of understood what he was saying, that nothing stays the same way for long, but had no idea what that would mean 30 years later – that everything is changing on a continual, ongoing basis. Sometimes I feel like I’d rather not get up in the morning because I know I’m going to have to deal with some sort of change.

But deal with it we must – hiding under the covers isn’t really a very good strategy. I mean that literally and metaphorically, because many of us are hiding under the covers by grabbing on every possible opportunity to keep things they way they are. From research reports that motivate us to say, “I guess we’re doing OK and don’t have to change anything,” to cutting off anyone who indicates the need for change, we’re engaged in a battle to stop the world.

But as JFK says, those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future. We need to build an infrastructure of change assessment, keeping the radar on at all times so we can better judge what the inevitable change means to us. We need to learn to assimilate and embrace change, for the opposite is to die a relic of the past with no future.