The Sneaky Difference Between Changing and Improving
Someone who has made a profound impact on my thinking about business is Tom Peters. Tom Peters is my reason, no, my justification for being quite rebellious in my way of doing things in business. Tom Peters and his opinions on the fact that the internet and technology has changed all the old-established rules of the game – is my permission to disagree with people much MUCH! more successful than me.
As a silly example, I think that the big boss having his own holy of holies – his own private office – is total and utter BS! Sure enough, there are things he needs to discuss that can’t become public knowledge before the right time… but what is the board room for? The boardroom is for meetings, the office is for bending the secretary over. Ok, so the office isn’t such a bad idea. Just kidding.
But I digress…
Tom Peters believes that if today’s large corporations don’t DESTROY the way they do things now, and instead re-invent, or RE-IMAGINE their whole way of doing things to take advantage of the Internet and latest technologies, they won’t be here in 20 years time, or at best they will be a mere remnant of their former selves.
According to Tom, it simply won’t be enough to do what most of the large corporates are doing, i.e. IMPROVING! They need to completely and utterly RE-IMAGINE, re-think, re-build from the ground up, every single aspect of their company if they want to stay competitive (read: around).
This started me thinking: There is a difference, fundamentally, between changing and improving. It’s like a wife-beater having a RADICAL revelation about how wrong it is to do what he is doing and INSTANTLY changing, and a wife-beater realising that it’s wrong, and gradually hitting his wife less.
When do we need to improve?
There is a time for gradually Improving. As a drummer, I’ve learned that gradual improvement is sometimes healthier than seeking overnight success. When I practice I start with what I enjoy, then work on the difficult stuff, and take it slow at first so the foundation is right.
So there is value in gradual, constant and never-ending improvement. But we need to know when small incremental changes are needed and when radical, major, life-altering actions are needed.
The Internet has changed everything for everyone, so at least in terms of business, a radical change is needed. If Kodak was still developing camera film they wouldn’t be around today. They didn’t gradually change the way they did business, they changed radically in a short period of time to embrace digital photography, and they’ll need to carry on changing with people buying photography paper and photo-printers for their own desks at home.
If a company thinks that radical change means eventually developing their own website, think again. I’m talking about a total complete revamp of the way we think about products, services and customers, a revamp built around a customer’s success, not our product or service.
What do we need in order to change?
The key is, if you have a complete, radical change in your perspective, you change immediately, not over a period of time.
I was a very naughty boy when I was younger and it got really bad at one stage. One day my mom got the needed papers to sign me up for boarding school. Well my parents did a great job of making me think boarding school was the worst place a boy could be, so when I saw that my mom wasn’t kidding around anymore, I wrote her a letter apologising and – instantly – changed my behaviour.
Unfortunately, you need to give it dedicated thought. Think about the pain of continuing on your current path until it becomes more painful than the pain of getting out of your comfort zone and changing.
Some things will never change until you get the hell in and channel that anger into massive dramatic action!