44: Resistance is Futile

Leaders make things happen.? People try to stop us.? That is the reality of the way the world?works. In order to be a leader, you must enact change. That is the only way things get better, no matter how much people don’t like it.? We take people to the future by moving them from the comfortable to the uncomfortable. People try to resist us…but resistance is futile!

In this episode I cover:

• Go through the list of reasons for change in this episode?and ask yourself, ?Are we experiencing any of these?? Describe them.
• Build your rationale list for why you as a group really need some changes.

?For any student of history, change is a law of life. ?Any attempt to contain it guarantees an explosion down the road; the more rigid the adherence to the status quo, the more violent the ultimate outcome will be.? Henry Kissinger

I have a friend that I serve with on the board of Columbia International University who owns a number of Burger King franchises in Georgia. He is very in tune to business, and once told me the primary reasons why businesses fail?

• An unmotivated workforce
• Out of touch with the marketplace
• Not pushing innovation
• Losing site of the bottom line (profit, loss, and accountability)

Why Change? A Few Other Good Reasons

Just to fight the status quo is of course not enough reason for some people to get on the band wagon of change. Many reasons drive people and groups to embark on the journey. Here are just a few I have discovered during my years of watching people work in organizations that try to make a difference in the world:

1. Globalization of the marketplace: How has the world moved to your doorstep? With the advent of the internet, email and ease of global shipping, your competition is only eight seconds away. Anyone from anywhere can compete with what you have to offer.

2. The changing nature of our constituencies: Have the people whom you serve changed dramatically in recent years? These are the people who are the end users of our organization?s purpose for existence. If you don?t offer them what they want on their terms, they are going elsewhere.

3. The changing nature of our customers: This is similar to the point above. Are you scratching people where they itch? Whether you are in a business that provides goods or services, or in the non profit sector, the people who use our services or products are changing dramatically today.

4. The changing nature of our work force: How have the changing of the generations effected how you do your work? The arrival of Generation X, the Millennium Kids and now the Mosaic Generation into our mainstream workforce makes new demands on managers of workers and volunteers.

5. The powerful new role of women in marketplace leadership: Woman of influence are bringing dramatic and needed changes to the former men?s clubs of corporate and private America.

6. Demographics: Your community and social surroundings have changed dramatically–have you changed with them? Neighborhoods grow and die.

7. Changing markets: Aside from the globalization issues, the very nature of doing your kind of work has changed in our culture, and you must make the necessary adjustments just to survive.

8. Lack of organizational vision: Are you suffering from organizational anemia? Is there lack of passion for your future? Is there chronic organizational drift?

9. Organizational ineffectiveness: Are you no longer effective in what you are in service to accomplish? Are you flat-out failing and attracting fewer and fewer people?

10. The Graying of your group: Are most of your people gray heads? If you are a senior center, that?s great. But if you are trying to meet the mainstream of our culture you are in trouble, because a new generation has arrived!

11. Changing cultural values: Many are talking today about the mega shift from modern to post modern thinking in our culture. This changes the rules about many things that have been constants in our world.

Oops?. I left out number 12. Sorry!

13. Patterns of repeated failure: Are you seeing one failure after another in your programs? Are people just not following where you are leading?

14. Chronic Plateau: Is nothing much exciting happening in your group–just more of the same as last year?

15. Decline in impact: Have you lost your organizational punch? Along with internal failure and drift, there is an obvious lack of visible, viable results.

16. High attrition levels: Are people leaving you in mass? Is you back door as big as your front? Are you not growing? Are people no longer attracted to your group?

17. Confusion about lines of responsibility/authority: Do you have organizational chaos in your group? No one seems to know who is actually responsible for what, so there is considerable wasted effort, confusion and poor use of resources.

18. Low morale: Are people discouraged about being members of your staff? Are the faithful insiders hanging on out of sheer loyalty, not a heartfelt passion? Is it just not a fun place to be?

19. Ongoing financial failure: How is your bottom line? You end every year in the red. You are in trouble financially because you are not growing. People are not flocking to your doors to avail themselves of what you have to offer.

20. The stirrings of God to do a new thing: Is God asking you to change? If you are a spiritual person, then serious prayer often brings a stirring of God to start fresh and do a new thing in your ministry. Ignore it and perish. And, leaders beware–sometimes the stirrings begin at the bottom of the organizational chart!

21. A growing sense of urgency: Is there restlessness with the status quo? At times you may develop a sense of urgency to rekindle your first love and foremost priorities and do a new thing. Heed it!