Is Change Risky? The Counterintuitive Truth About Standing Still

Change is always risky. Right?

You can’t be sure what results you’ll get. You don’t know what unintended consequences might arise. You don’t know how people will react… though you have your (probably well-founded) suspicisions it won’t all be positive.

What is even riskier, though, is not changing.

The Brutal Reality of Not Changing

As the author Gordan McDonald writes -

“an organisation… that was considered to be the best of the best at one point in time is likely to lose most of its advantage when there’s massive historical change, or, as Barker puts it, paradigm shift. If that organisation doesn’t take the changes seriously and ask what they mean and make suitable adjustments, it will find itself losing ground, maybe going out of existence. In fact, it’s not just suitable adjustments, it may mean total reinvention.”

The Velocity of Change

It’s a principle that increasingly holds true for any kind of organisation; any group of people trying to accomplish something together in the world; or even each of us as individual leaders trying to be effective in a rapidly changing world.

Everything is in constant motion. Everything is transforming.

The famous business guru Peter Drucker talks about the progression of human cultures whereby we see society utterly reorganising itself – its worldview, values, political systems, social structures, arts… everything – completely different.

It’s been happening steadily throughout history, and it’s happening at an even more breathtaking rate today. At a certain point, you look around and realise that the world in which you live is not the world into which you were born. And, more importantly, that those born today cannot possibly even imagine the world which preceeded them by even a few decades.

Cultures are living organisms. They reorganize. They shift. They evolve.

That means that, in whatever arena we are trying to make a difference, we need to keep changing like we need to keep breathing. If we don’t, we will stagnate; suffocate. Irrelevance will eventually relegate us to obscurity.

The Painful Truth About Change

But it is still a risk. It is still painful to change. Human nature leans towards repeating what has gained us success in the past, rather than asking the hard questions about what will best position us for success in the future.

Too often, as authors Rainer and Geiger put it,

"the pain of change is greater than the pain of ineffectiveness."

In other words - comfort is the most dangerous strategy.

So why bother?

Because it’s a risk we have to take. If what we are trying to do matters (and if it doesn’t why are we bothering?), then we have to demand of ourselves that we don’t play it safe. We must continually reevaluate:

• How relevant are my current approaches?

• What emerging trends could disrupt my world?

• Where are my blind spots?

• What new opportunities might be opening up?

We must be willing to risk the changes that will keep us effective, relevant, and deliberate in our lives!

The Challenge

Question: In what area of your life are you resisting the inevitable transformation?

Because the greatest risk isn't changing.

It's staying exactly the same.