"Mr. Fuller, are you listening? Would you care to answer the question? What will you be doing in the year 2000?"
I was not accustomed to paying too much attention in high school, and the question caught me off guard.
What would I be doing in the year 2000? That seemed so far away in the spring of 1981! I was more interested in thinking about what I would be doing on the weekend, or after school that day, never mind almost 20 years away. My teenage mind was asking "Who thinks like that?"
But those 20 years went fast, and almost another 20 years have passed... Where does all the time go?
If we are not careful, our whole life can slip through our hands without us knowing about it. We wake up one day to find that we have grey hair, less hair and lots of wrinkles. When I am talking to my clients about their business and their lives, I like to ask the question, what will you be doing in 20 years? What is the legacy you want to leave behind?
Let's think about it for a moment.
If we knew when we were going to die, would we do things differently now? What would you change? How old will you be when you die? What are the things you would like to do before you die? Your bucket list?
When you are writing those things down, think about how old you need to be do those things. If you want to spend more time with your family, do you want to do that after you make your fortune, or do you want to make time now?
The truth is most business people never make a fortune, and there is never enough time for those we love. But what happens if we don't change?
If you are like most people, you would rather leave things the way they are. Change scares us, making plans seems to set us for failure. However, without change, we can't grow as organizations or individuals.
In business, we often have to make hard decisions that affect change in order to make sure that our businesses are successful. These decisions might be unpopular with our stakeholders, our employees, our suppliers and even our customers. However, in order to be able to continue to serve them all, we know that things can't stay the way they are and decisions must be made. We must make some changes.
A study by Andrew Day titled Mutual Trust is Essential for Successful Change found that leaders who were successful in facilitating change in their organizations did five crucial things.
No. 1 - They helped people make sense of what and why change was happening in the organization.
No. 2 - They listened to employees concerns and opinions. (What a novel idea!)
No. 3 - They reframed the changes so that employees could understand them and have some control in influence in how the change was affecting them.
No. 4 - They coached their people to help them react to and prioritize their activities around the change.
No. 5 - They were transparent and shared information even when it was unlikely to be received favorably.
When leaders care about their employees, and are open and honest about the effects of change, there is less angst and easier adaptation to the change that is taking place. Even in situations where the consequences are severe, where there are high levels of trust and respect in the workplace, home, or even family, change can be managed in such a way that people's dignity is enshrined.
Sometimes we are called to change. While those moments of change can be scary, awkward, and even downright fearful, the truth of the matter is that looking back 20 years later, we see that it was the best thing that happened to us or our organization.
Change, however, is incremental. That means that often it's not the big things that are important but the small seemingly insignificant tasks. Sometimes it's just something that happens in our heart, but we take a small step forward and that results in a cascade of action that can change the world. Or at least the world around us.
If you want to leave a legacy, today is the day that you need to start on that path, no matter how old you are, its never too late to change something that isn't working for you.
Are you listening?
Dave Fuller MBA, certified professional business coach, author of the book Profit Yourself Healthy, helps business owners and leaders make changes that cascade into legacies. Email [email protected] if you are ready for positive change.
