A few weeks back I wrote about Change as an opportunity in disguise. A few questions came up including:
What next? What are we to do with an opportunity that shows? How can I use Change to help me grow? Aren’t we supposed to create things? Aren’t we supposed to enjoy life?
Great questions! Change provides opportunities to assess the situation and prepare for the future. For an individual, change presents opportunities to build new skills, new habits, new artifacts, new friendships, new connections, etc. For an organization, change presents opportunities to fix issues, build new products, engage customers, acquire customers, hire or train people, build culture, etc. Change encourages us to transform and build. In software the process after coding is often called build. I am going to adopt BUILD as the big next step after change.
BUILD is: Begin with Understanding to Innovate, Learn, and Deliver
Often when there is a change, it is natural for us to slow down or stop. Change can lead to uncertainty, fear, doubt, and denial. It takes time – sometimes in second, days or years – depending on the individuals, to accept the change. More the changes an individual has faced, the faster one can break lose of the uncertainties and accept the change. Acceptance of change leads one to begin exploring further. Beginning is half-job done right.Beginning with full engagement may take time; that is okay.
As one explores, it is important to reflect and understand the situation that led to the change(s). Reflection is a hard job. Reflection requires us to look at the events dispassionately without pinning any blame on anyone. Yes, pointing fingers elsewhere might be easier; resisting that will lead to better discovery. In dealing with problems, we are encouraged to ask the why question at least six times. That applies in the reflection process too. Ask why the change happened? Why the change happened to me? Why now? Why not for others? Why is there change in this place? What is happening outside? Sometimes the reason for changes may not be immediately visible, though the roots may run deeper into the past. I like the idea of writing down the potential reasons for change and about the circumstances. Writing helps me to offload the issues in my head to a piece of paper and allows me to observe the items from a reflective 3rd party sense. Often I tear-off and trash the written note to reduce the need to keep clutter. Reflection also can include gathering inputs and feedback from people that one trusts. This way there is an opportunity to get fresh perspective and related information. Again, we are trying to understand the reasons for change from many angles.
After understanding, it is easier to reaffirm the acceptance to begin exploring solutions. Provided the change magnitude is high (ex: projects cancelled, business in trouble), it is more important to use the understanding to drive small as well as big changes. Creating new skills, new habits, new things, … all of these are broadly grouped as innovation in an organizational setting. Apply the same innovation mindset for handling personal changes as well. Innovation can apply both to what we do as well as how we do things; Innovation can be small and / or big. Starting small and something new is useful. Even a big idea can be turned into a series of small explorations for steady pacing at lower costs. My approach is to try a few small things to reduce the burden of working through the new items after change. Rather than just attempting one or two big items at a time, it is highly beneficial to work on multiple small things at the same time. Innovation is more a journey than a destination by itself.
The primary goal of starting small is to help pace ourselves to fully immerse and learn. Rarely we want to make the same mistakes, provided the circumstances have not changed. Small adjustments on a well understood path is more beneficial than attempting larger gamut of changes on a tight schedule. Learning comes from frequent checkpoints. It applies both on a personal basis, at a team level and in an organizational level. At each checkpoint it is useful to objectively jot down what has happened and what may need to happen. We will discover new openings or approaches that are worthy of consideration. Collective reflection allows for understanding about the engagement of individuals in the project and the emotional state of everyone. Every small move deserves a celebration – even a small pat on the back goes a long way. In the reflection process, it is completely okay to admit failure and ask questions about how we can improve on the findings. From learning comes a firm reengagement and recommit to pursue the activities that helps us tide the changes. If you want to try simple experiments, try to build Paper Towers. This seemingly simple exercise can prepares us for innovation and learning.
As a final step, everyone desires to see end results. This is where delivery comes in. Delivery can be a series of small aspects incrementally made possible with our innovation efforts. Delivery may be a document, a product, or a process adopted. Delivery can be at a personal level or team level or organizational level. Staying consistent and focused will allow us to deliver on a steady pace to learn and iterate repeatedly. That is the spirit of many process oriented approaches – sprints, kanban, etc. Just a process devoid of understanding and learning will not help. Hence understanding and learning are called out earlier. In most settings having metrics are a useful guide to assess the quality of delivery from an objective standpoint. Even for personal development there can be metrics. For example, an author can measure the number of minutes of focused writing. A runner often measures the number of miles ran or minutes ran without incurring pain. For a product oriented delivery, the measure is simpler – did the product come to life with least issues in it. Deliver, learn, iterate, and pursue new innovations building a better future.
Wish you all the best in your pursuits to BUILD a better world for yourselves and others!
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