I started writing about change 25 years ago and, to be honest, I thought I would have run out of material years ago. However, it’s been just the opposite. Today, I can’t write fast enough to keep up with the daily changes we encounter and our change program (Productive Chaos: Riding the Wave of Change) continues to be our most requested seminar and keynote.
Of course, some things never seem to change. For instance:
- Very few people seem to like change.
- Many simply refuse to change.
- Most wait too long to change.
- Many change only when forced.
- Successful individuals and organizations encourage and support change and are usually the first to do so.
- Finally, few seem to learn anything from the above information.
While changes happen all around us on a daily basis and often affect our lives in some way, many have neglected to notice them. For instance, were you aware of these recent changes?
- McDonalds is seriously considering a dinner menu, breakfast all day, monthly specials, a $1 bratwurst and home delivery. Development in each of these areas is currently in progress.
- Target, the nation’s second-largest discounter behind Walmart, plans to match prices that customers find on identical products at top online retailers, all the time. That would include Amazon.com, Walmart, Best Buy, and Toys R Us.
- Major League baseball is planning a deal with T-Mobile to create an on-field communication system connecting managers in dugouts to coaches in bullpens, which should have replaced the very antiquated phone system long ago.
- Starbucks, the world’s largest coffee chain, recently opened its first retail store — dubbed Evolution Fresh — focused not on selling coffee but on premium juices and vegan and veggie dishes. Starbucks bought Evolution Fresh, Inc. for $30 million! It is also enhancing its loyalty-rewards program, adding an interactive web site for customer input, adding drive-thru windows and to-go meals for breakfast and lunch. Starbucks is now selling its products off grocery shelves and recently developed a “short” $1 coffee offering as well as a new $7 cup of brew.
As you can plainly see, change favors no particular industry, organization, product or service. Change is happening faster and more often than ever before and shows no signs of letting up.
Everyone in your organization must be open and eager to embrace constant change if you are to compete in today’s chaotic business environment. A knowledgeable and well-trained staff is a key ingredient in your future success.
You can bet your competition is aware of this fact as well and may very well be taking the necessary action to insure their success. Can you say the same?
Contact Dr. Jeff Drake at 1-800-886-2629 for more information on our “Productive Chaos” change program. Make certain you’re prepared to “Ride the Wave of Change”!
About Harry K. Jones
Harry K. Jones is a motivational speaker and consultant for AchieveMax®, Inc., a company of professional speakers who provide custom-designed seminars, keynote presentations, and consulting services. Harry's top requested topics include change management, customer service, creativity, employee retention, goal setting, leadership, stress management, teamwork, and time management. For more information on Harry's presentations, please call 800-886-2629 or fill out our contact form.
Yes, Harry, like it or not, “The times…they are a-changin'”. I He who rejects change is the architect of decay. The only human institution which rejects progress is the cemetery. ~Harold Wilson
If you don’t like something change it; if you can’t change it, change the way you think about it. ~Mary Engelbreit
It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory. ~W. Edwards Deming (Thanks, Michelle)
All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another. ~Anatole France
When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves. ~Victor Frankl
Without accepting the fact that everything changes, we cannot find perfect composure. But unfortunately, although it is true, it is difficult for us to accept it. Because we cannot accept the truth of transience, we suffer. ~Shunryu Suzuki
The man who looks for security, even in the mind, is like a man who would chop off his limbs in order to have artificial ones which will give him no pain or trouble. ~Henry Miller
You must welcome change as the rule but not as your ruler. ~Denis Waitley
Change is inevitable – except from a vending machine. ~Robert C. Gallagher
If you’re in a bad situation, don’t worry it’ll change. If you’re in a good situation, don’t worry it’ll change. ~John A. Simone, Sr.
There is a certain relief in change, even though it be from bad to worse! As I have often found in travelling in a stagecoach, that it is often a comfort to shift one’s position, and be bruised in a new place. ~Washington Irving
When you are through changing, you are through. ~Bruce Barton
Faced with the choice between changing one’s mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof. ~John Kenneth Galbraith
What can we take on trust
in this uncertain life? Happiness, greatness,
pride – nothing is secure, nothing keeps.
~Euripides, Hecuba
They must often change, who would be constant in happiness or wisdom. ~Confucius
Change always comes bearing gifts. ~Price Pritchett
The only difference between a rut and a grave is their dimensions. ~Ellen Glasgow
Life is its own journey, presupposes its own change and movement, and one tries to arrest them at one’s eternal peril. ~Laurens van der Post
Growth is the only evidence of life. ~John Henry Newman, Apologia pro vita sua, 1864
Just because everything is different doesn’t mean anything has changed. ~Irene Peter
Time is a dressmaker specializing in alterations. ~Faith Baldwin
The circumstances of the world are so variable that an irrevocable purpose or opinion is almost synonymous with a foolish one. ~William H. Seward
The birds are molting. If only man could molt also – his mind once a year its errors, his heart once a year its useless passions. ~James Allen
The man who never alters his opinion is like standing water, and breeds reptiles of the mind. ~William Blake
Man’s yesterday may ne’er be like his morrow;
Nought may endure but Mutability.
~Percy Bysshe Shelley, “Mutability”
You can avoid having ulcers by adapting to the situation: If you fall in the mud puddle, check your pockets for fish. ~Author Unknown
Time, which changes people, does not alter the image we have retained of them. ~Marcel Proust
Stubbornness does have its helpful features. You always know what you are going to be thinking tomorrow. ~Glen Beaman
If nothing ever changed, there’d be no butterflies. ~Author Unknown
I put a dollar in one of those change machines. Nothing changed. ~George Carlin
We did not change as we grew older; we just became more clearly ourselves. ~Lynn Hall
It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change. ~Author unknown, commonly misattributed to Charles Darwin
Change may come to you in trinkets and I hope it adorns your life gracefully. ~Dodinsky
To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly. ~Henri Bergson
The wheel of change moves on, and those who were down go up and those who were up go down. ~Jawaharlal Nehru
We would rather be ruined than changed;
We would rather die in our dread
Than climb the cross of the moment
And let our illusions die.
~W.H. Auden
What you have become is the price you paid to get what you used to want. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic’s Notebook, 1960
Those who expect moments of change to be comfortable and free of conflict have not learned their history. ~Joan Wallach Scott
You never have a friend all figured out. Just when you think you know what makes them tick, they tock. ~Robert Brault
All change is not growth, as all movement is not forward. ~Ellen Glasgow
Oh, would that my mind could let fall its dead ideas, as the tree does its withered leaves! ~Andre Gide
If you want to make enemies, try to change something. ~Woodrow Wilson
After you’ve done a thing the same way for two years, look it over carefully. After five years, look at it with suspicion. And after ten years, throw it away and start all over. ~Alfred Edward Perlman, New York Times, 3 July 1958
Continuity gives us roots; change gives us branches, letting us stretch and grow and reach new heights. ~Pauline R. Kezer
If you would attain to what you are not yet, you must always be displeased by what you are. For where you are pleased with yourself there you have remained. Keep adding, keep walking, keep advancing. ~Saint Augustine
We spend our time searching for security and hate it when we get it. ~John Steinbeck, America and Americans
A good question is never answered. It is not a bolt to be tightened into place but a seed to be planted and to bear more seed toward the hope of greening the landscape of idea. ~John Ciardi
Little stones that are pelted into the lake of consciousness should not throw the whole lake into commotion. ~Paramahansa Yogananda, God Talks With Arjuna
The bamboo that bends is stronger than the oak that resists. ~Japanese Proverb
Everything comes to pass, nothing comes to stay. ~Matthew Flickstein
The devil could change. He was once an angel and may be evolving still. ~Laurence J. Peter
Nothing that is can pause or stay;
The moon will wax, the moon will wane,
The mist and cloud will turn to rain,
The rain to mist and cloud again,
Tomorrow be today.
~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
There is no reason why the same man should like the same books at eighteen and forty-eight. ~Ezra Pound
Every beginning is a consequence – every beginning ends some thing. ~Paul Valery
It’s the most unhappy people who most fear change. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic’s Notebook, 1966
People don’t change. Only their costumes do. ~Gene Moore
God grant me the serenity to accept the people I cannot change, the courage to change the one I can, and the wisdom to know it’s me. ~Author Unknown
We all have big changes in our lives that are more or less a second chance. ~Harrison Ford
Neither a wise man nor a brave man lies down on the tracks of history to wait for the train of the future to run over him. ~Dwight D. Eisenhower
No two men ever judged alike of the same thing, and it is impossible to find two opinions exactly similar, not only in different men but in the same men at different times. ~Michel Montaigne
If you want to truly understand something, try to change it. ~Kurt Lewin
Every single thing changes and is changing always in this world. Yet with the same light the moon goes on shining. ~Saigyo
Things do not change; we change. ~Henry David Thoreau
Our only security is our ability to change. ~John Lilly
Because things are the way they are, things will not stay the way they are. ~Bertold Brecht
He that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils; for time is the greatest innovator. ~Francis Bacon, “On Innovation,” Essays, 1597
Things alter for the worse spontaneously, if they be not altered for the better designedly. ~Francis Bacon
A scholar who loves comfort is not fit to be called a scholar. ~Confucius, Analects
Sudden resolutions, like the sudden rise of the mercury in the barometer, indicate nothing but the changeableness of the weather. ~Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare, Guesses at Truth, by Two Brothers, 1827
Every possession and every happiness is but lent by chance for an uncertain time, and may therefore be demanded back the next hour. ~Arthur Schopenhauer
When you jump for joy, beware that no one moves the ground from beneath your feet. ~Stanislaw Lec
The only man I know who behaves sensibly is my tailor; he takes my measurements anew each time he sees me. The rest go on with their old measurements and expect me to fit them. ~George Bernard Shaw
profound to say, so I thought I’d find a quotation and found so many that I couldn’t choose, but the first one jumped out at me more. I thought I’d share them with you in case you ever want to use them. Thank you for the e-mail.