Change Within

By: Duke Rohe  drohe@att.net

Companies are hustling to get ahead of the competition.  They’re checking every corner of the organization for waste and ways to reduce costs without major trade-offs in service or quality.  They realign, reform and transform to provide the best for less.  This fast-paced change is naturally viewed as painfully difficult to its employees.  There are usually casualties of displaced staff along the way.  Those remaining not only wonder when the next reshaping will take place, but where they will be after it occurs.

To most, this continuous changing may sound bleak.  It’s disruptive to the entitlement of security, and it places uncertainty as to where we will end up.  But if we take a step back, we will see a more healthy side of change.  Change is necessary for companies to survive.  They stay ahead in profits or they cease to exist.  Anything less than a positive direction is unhealthy to the organization, its purpose to its community and its benefit to its workforce.

It is not until the probability of change sets in, that our internal radar pops up, it pushes us off the sofa of the “Way We Were” and causes us to begin looking at options we never seriously considered before.  Re-looking at where we are and how we will endure a change is not such a bad deal.  It’s not something most readily jump into, but think of the benefits.  There are options and considerations that were never explored before.  There are areas of our emotional envelopes that would have never been stretched this far.  AND we would have never known if we could have weathered such a change or could have steered a new direction.  It’s one of life’s forced work-outs that builds character which could not have been realized without the change.

Often, it is not until we are in a mode of change that we consider what is really important.  What is our purpose in the scheme of things.  What really matters.  How much change can we really take.  It is only then we realize that security is not in the things we have.  Our image of happiness is no longer an easy-chair of positive things coming our way.  It is only then that we see life has fantastic variability.  With each turn, each bump, each dip, there is a mountain we can conquer.  Life becomes a continuous set of lessons learned which bring more fulfillment and ability along the way.  Confidence comes from experience, and every time a change is endured or a positive attitude is maintained, we have new strength to take on the next inevitable challenge.

This new ability makes us more than what we were had the change not come in and upset our apple cart.  We have more depth, more understanding, more receptiveness to life because of the change.  About the only thing we can control is our attitude.  We can look at organizational change as something out to get us and put us out in the cold or we can know that when it comes, we will have a better, more fulfilling part of life to experience.  For the best change is the one within.