You do not have to manage change to make it happen.
You can still make a decision and expect everyone to act accordingly.
You can drift through the days and wait for something to come your way.
You can stand on the side and take credit for whatever success will come.
You do not have to manage change, but when you manage change you make it a shared experience. A shared decision, a shared opportunity, a shared outcome. It is only by managing change that you can make a long-term impact.
If presented with the possibility, would you share the highest reward with your fiercest competitor? Would you be fine with going down in history together with them? Or would you just try a bit harder, a bit further, to be the only winner?
Too often we see competition as a zero-sum game, a clear winner and loser is a must. But what occurred in the high jump points to something far greater. As we outlined in Peak Performance*, if we can put our ego aside, we actually free ourselves up to perform to our best ability. Our ego often pushes us to perform out of a place of fear, of needing to show the world that I’m good enough. When we can let go of that noise, and realize that competition is about getting the most out of ourselves, we can fulfill our potential.
Brad Stulberg, Competing with instead of always against
Things that work in marketing:
Things that do not work in marketing:The greatest illusion
This one is from Rand Fishkin, worth remembering after the summer.
When you set out to figure out how to control your employees more closely – checking how much time they spend in meetings, measuring how many breaks they take during the day, asking for what reasons they are taking time off -, you have problems that no surveillance system in the world can fix.
Trust leads engagement.
Structure is what gives predictability. You can expect certain things to happen because the script says so. Structure does not like free thinkers and innovators: somebody else already did all the thinking and the innovating, it is now time to march.
Chaos is the exact opposite. You have to figure out what is going to happen because there is no script. Chaos does not believe in bosses and managers: there is no past experience to replicate or resources to carefully allocate, it is time to connect the dots.
Design your habits and practice so that it is possible to move continuosly between structure and chaos.
That is a feat you will need.
You've got this 