This title line is way too familiar to those of you with small children who have traveled in the car on vacation or another local “exciting” destination like Chucky Cheese, Worlds of Fun or Disney. When we step outside of this childlike mindset, the concept applies to the way we view and approach life and business. We’re often looking to “arrive.”
For most, the human spirit within us has an internal hope and optimism that we will get to our destination often more quickly than we will. Or, we may have the tendency to believe there’s nowhere else we can go because we’re there! The destination or desire is different for all of us, based on many things – from our upbringing to our drive to how we define success. Or, maybe, we just get comfortable or we’re just plain tired of change.
What are Your Strengths?
Green and Growing or Ripe and Rotting?
I came upon a saying in a book by Lilly Walters, a public speaking expert, many years ago. I still frequently use it today. Simply stated, she put it like this, “We’re either green and growing or ripe and rotting.” Well, if you put it that way … the choice is pretty easy. I choose growth. I choose change. I choose to be uncomfortable.
In our increasingly complex world, there are many unknowns. In the world of energy for example, many things are changing. We don’t exactly know where the future of fossil fuel is going. We do know that innovative thought leaders suggest there’s an impending time horizon where a gradual and then sudden shift will occur. Within the last several years, it seemed many in this sector had arrived. Today, the ambiguity is sometimes scary.
As you look at the need to keep going, growing and changing, consider this:
1- Organizations can’t change unless leaders lead the change. What are you doing to make sure you’re open and adaptable? “Companies change under the impetus of enlightened leaders who first recognize and exploit new potentials dormant in the organization or its circumstances.” (Inc., Oct. 2016)
2- Continue to do a performance gap analysis by looking at the current and desired state for you individually and the organization. “Proactive management of change to minimize future adaptability is invariably a more creative way of dealing with the dynamisms of industrial transformation than letting them happen nilly-willy,” writes Ann Gilley, the author of Manager as Change Leader.
3- In discovering or validating your gaps, recognize the power in the simple wisdom of Jim Rohn, author and motivational speaker. “We generally change ourselves for one of two reasons: inspiration or desperation… To have more than we’ve got, he continues, we must become more than we already are.”
We’re not there yet. We know change is inevitable. Ripe and rotting isn’t an option.