Change isn’t the enemy, so enjoy it

My 9-month-old granddaughter visited us every day for a month this summer. One day, Kayley sat on the floor and played with her toys. She tried to move, but couldn’t quite figure it out. Five days later, she crawled 12 feet to explore something new.

Every day is a new adventure for Kayley. Curiosity, change and growth define her life. It seems as if every hour produces change, and she revels in it. Watching her one day, I marveled at how human beings can be so enthralled with change in their infancy but become so stuck in their ways in adulthood.

Most of us dislike change. We want people, processes and even furniture to remain static. Many of us in the workplace act out in negative ways when we confront change. Both leaders and employees often fear it. It’s viewed too often as some sort of management hammer designed to intimidate employees and keep them in line.

The inevitability of change seems to elude people. For years, I had a sign in my office area that read: “The future is change and that’s all that’s certain.” But for many people change is something they resist. They don’t see it as the natural flow of things as little Kayley does. Too many of us think of change as the enemy.

Too many people view change as a single, defined event with a beginning, middle and end. Recently, “Friend A” described a spiritual search he has undertaken to improve his attitude and his approach to life. After listening for a while, “Friend B” asked when Friend A would end his search, knowing he had made the necessary changes.

Friend B is one of the smartest people I know, yet he fell into the familiar trap of thinking change is a goal to be achieved rather than a process to be enjoyed and experienced. He is typical of many Americans who view practically everything as a mountain to climb. We climb the mountain, we celebrate, and then we move on to a new mountain.

An author named Steve Donahue has written a fascinating new book called “Shifting Sands: A Guidebook for Crossing the Deserts of Change” in which he argues that mountains are a good metaphor for achieving specific goals, but most of us should appreciate the transitions of life as a “desert of change.”

Donahue writes: “But much of life is not at all about achievement, success or goals. Life is often about being lost, finding ourselves, getting stuck, getting unstuck, following a mirage, and then finding our way for a while until we get lost again.” Donahue says, “Much of life is like a desert, not a mountain.”

In our workplaces, we certainly have necessary mountains: Devising plans for a new product or process, producing specific products, and keeping costs low are all necessary and important mountains. But in most workplaces, everybody gets so focused on those “accomplishment” mountains they forget about bigger, long-term issues that will ultimately determine the success of the company and its individuals.

Those are things like solid relationships between team members, values that guide company behavior, and attitudes toward individual growth and development. If the workplace successfully focuses on those deeper “desert” issues, change on “mountain” issues will be much easier.

So much resistance to change comes from a need to control our tasks and our work environment. Change would be so much easier if we realized there are a lot bigger “life” issues at stake in our work than the position of our desk. Creating more complete, more fulfilled workers should be the goal of management and each employee and that would make change as natural as crawling and standing is for an infant like Kayley.

Tip for your search: Be adventurous. Change just for change’s sake. If you’re not growing, you’re dying. Shake things up. Keep your eye on the big goals in your life and not just the little goals.

Resource for your search: “Shifting Sands: A Guidebook for Crossing the Deserts of Change” by Steve Donahue (Berrett-Koehler Publishers Inc., 2004)