Tag Archives: change

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Checks and Balances

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The law of supply and demand can act as a key behaviour control.  Action and reaction can also serve this purpose.  These two practices can be used as tools to effect change.

It’s So Unfair

I had a conversation the other day about people being mistreated.  Things like unrealistic job performance demands, little sympathy for hardship, or taking a hard line on working hours or working conditions.

Clearly wrong or harsh behaviour cannot always be corrected or resolved through a reaction or by managing supply or demand.  However, these approaches can influence change and do provide the opportunity to drive outcomes.

Whether successful or not, at least you tried.  Taking action is far more likely to achieve a result than just hoping the “luck of the Irish will prevail”.  That is, if you take no action you should expect no result.

(Side note, luck of the Irish refers to winning or succeeding at something for no apparent reason.  Like finding gold when others cannot or winning at gambling).

For Example

An obvious example of using the law of supply and demand to affect behaviour change is trade sanctions (limiting supply). In this case one group of countries might apply a trade blockade to another country to influence them to change their behaviour (e.g., stop developing nuclear arms)

At a more granular level, if an employer cuts your wage, you could just accept it but alternately you could refuse to accept the insult and provide supporting evidence of your value, (measurable evidence) and outline the impacts of losing you as a valuable resource versus some short term monetary savings.  The ability to react and how you react is up to you.

Give it a try

Next time you see unjust behaviour, try to effect a change.  What can you lose, beyond the time and effort to try.

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Outside Influences

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Regular readers will know that I am a strong believer in the philosophy of personal accountablity.  Your behaviour, how  you feel, in essence your life style, only has one owner – you.

Even if you are a beliver and practitioner of your own absolute control over your destiny,  the influence your day to day environment has can be very powerful.

What we do each day matters

Whether your daily routine is working for someone, for yourself, taking care of others or any of the numerous ways we keep ourselves occupied day in and day out, regardless of how strongly you believe in your ability to fully control how you feel and act, the daily routine has a powerfull impact on your ability to do so.

(That last sentence is a doozy so you may want to read it again slowly.)

If you need a change, make it so

When you recognize the power of the environmental influences is impacting your ability to maintain control, that is continuing to feel good about yourself is a chore it might be time to seek a change in your main daily activities (e.g., your job or business)

Typically is this a difficult decision and a hard one to arrive at.  Some are fortunate that their employer makes it for them, or there business goes down the tubes.  While others suffer internally for years.

 

 

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Push me into it

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Occassionally I influence external forces to push me into a behavior or situational change.  I always do this with cautious consideration of the risks.

Surprisingly I have found this to be an effective way to leverage my self awareness toward motivating positive change -my own change that is.

For example reinvigorating your carreer

Often circumstances, (for example dependents, debt, self worth)  can act as deterents to personal changes.

Wanting to change your job or even type of work you do (a full carreer change) can be daunting.  Desire can provide motivation but sometimes it is just not enough and the blocking factors act as an override.

Sometimes you probably just want to stay in bed with your pillow wrapped around your head.  Usually you overcome the lethargy and get up.  However on occassion you need help, someone pours water on you or pulls the sheets away. Up you jump.

Driving desired action

Consider a person in a job they don’t enjoy, perhaps even dislike, but can’t motivate themselves to find another.  This is a great opportunity to leverage the help of others.

Behave badly.  Increasingly so if needed.  Ultimately this forces some change.  Maybe an offer of retirement, an open invitation to leave (perhaps even a forceful one).

You create motivation and the change is made and like the action pouring of cold water on your head or removal of your sheets you have to jump up and do something.

This is just an example but forcing a job change would not be recommended as a starting place for this technique, I would work up to it before trying (if appyling to this extreme situation at all).

Think it over

If you are in a place of lethargy, unable to resolve/ motivate a change yourself, give this approach some thought.  I can testify from experience , this works.  The word of caution is there are some risks and things might not always proceed as you planned (so be careful).

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

How to make a change

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Over the years I have read a number of books on change mangement  together with attending numerous seminars.  All focused on the tools and techniques to bring about sucessful changes.

Not surprisingly, communication is key with motivation a close second.  Simply put; what is the change and whats in it for you? There are many ways to answer these questions. The books andseminars provide helpful ideas on how to do this.

Whats Missing

Often overlooked is the critical fact that change starts with you. Communication, understanding and motivation but in the beginning its all about the individual.  Whether they are a creator or an acceptor of the change, the individual is key.

As an individual, what barriers exist?  Resistance to change is, on average, a standard humam trait.  Receptivity to change is part of your personal attitudes. Normal attitude equal low receptivity.

Obviously, if  one of “change is good” is one your values your ability to embrace change is higher.

Often these people are the best change agents and when changes are occuring it is always helpful to  seek out these folks. Usually they are easy to identify because they want to help.

How to get started

Whether creating or participating in change the first is to jump in.  Participating in a change does not mean you cannot influence it,you can.

Resisting the change takes more effort than participating and inflencing.  When you are a part of the change the chance of getting a benifit is much higher.

So jump off the burning platform (a change story for another time) and enjoy.

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Life is change

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My friends and family have directly experienced a number of life changing events over the last couple of months, for myself the impacts have been somewhat indirect but still part of my life.

This got me thinking about how life is a constant series of changes – the frequency and impact varies, but the change never stops.

Change is Good

A long time ago I added “change is good” to my set of personal values.  The concept resonated with me and it felt like a good fit with my other values and personal philosophy.

With the frequency of changes occurring around me recently I started to think about my change value in a slightly different context.

Perhaps intuitively I realized change is inevitable.   Given it’s constant and all around us,  embracing the changes and going with the flows will result in much more positive results. (Sort of, why fight it you won’t win anyway?)

Even those things that have negative emotions associated with them are going to occur and need to be worked through.

Ultimately, my personal acceptance of change( that is any change), as being good because things need to change lays a foundation for acceptance.  I am the one who chooses how I deal with changes, and also I have a personal accountability to do so, changes cannot just be ignored.

Where would we be without change

The other aspect of this value about embracing change is the recognition that life is all about change.  Without changes, what is the point of living.  Things occur, some happen to us and some we make happen but all of these things form the reason to live.

Maybe a simple answer to the deep philosophical  question “Why am I here?”   is basically to both experience and embrace ongoing change.