Often in business change happens.  Whether is is forced upon you, whether you are the driver, whether it was well planned there are very few companies, relationships or people that don’t change.   Two of the most successful companies right now have gone thru drastic changes, Apple and Microsoft.

Apple has turned itself to a dominate cell phone company and Microsoft to a cloud based services company.   These changes did not come easy, and didn’t come with wishy washy side ways going.  It came with a strong leader driving the way.

When I was at financial firm there was an influx of managers from a competitor. Their goal was the raise us to new level of success.  There was a drive to not only compete with other financial firms, but also be “dot-comish.”  All of the old employees were to learn the new way of working.  The old style isn’t going to fly, the old culture isn’t going to be acceptable.  The CTO of the stated  “Get on the steamroller or be part of the pavement.”  When change comes, you better be willing to change.  If you don’t you will find yourself being run over, and thrown out.  As Bruce Lee says “To change with change is a changeless state.”

There were people who left, people who were let go and new people brought in.  There was a whirlwind of change.    If you wanted to stay, wanted to continue on you needed to change.   Which in his eyes was to get on the steamroller.   From one of those who was there, it was nothing, change had already happened in the years I had been there.  In fact having been there for a bunch of years already, there was multiple changes.  Whether reoriganization, change of IT units, cancelling of giant projects, I had seen change come and go.

Seeing someone come in and state it, was new, but knowing how to change was the course of business.  In fact that notion of change has allowed me not only keep a current job, but go on to do other things.   I have adopted from organization to organization, role to role, and company to company.  The key is finding out what the steamroller is, could be a methodology, culture, business model or anything else.

I have also learned there are people who can and willing to do the same job over and over again.  But that is not me, and if you want something more I am not sure you can.  “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”  This quote is attributed to Einstein, and if he said it or not, it does make sense.  Either way the statement is the same, you need to change.  So get on the steamroller, be part of the change and avoid being part of the pavement.

I updated this on Dec 18th, 2020…

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