Embracing Change Or Defending The Status Quo?

Photo Credit: ginnerobot

Change is inevitable but that doesn't make it any easier when we are going through it. The organization that I worked for is in the process of a major change as we will be changing our name in early 2012. Though we feel like this change is needed in order to be more effective in our mission, there has been a vocal minority that has wanted to stick with the status quo.

Whether what we are doing is working or not is irrelevant to those that are fiercely committed to maintaining the status quo. They like things they way they are and want them to stay that way forever. But change sometimes is necessary and can be life-giving. There is typically a sense of loss that we experience when going through a major change but we still need to go through it in order to experience a better reality on the other side.

Seth Godin offers some pointed questions in considering if we might be a person that is too committed to the status quo:

• Consider the cost of switching before you consider the benefits?
• Highlight the pain to a few instead of the benefits for the many?
• Exaggerate how good things are now in order to reduce your fear of change?
• Undercut the credibility, authority or experience of people behind the change?
• Grab onto the rare thing that could go wrong instead of amplifying the likely thing that will go right?
• Focus on short-term costs instead of long-term benefits, because the short-term is more vivid for you?
• Fight to retain benefits and status earned only through tenure and longevity?
• Embrace an instinct to accept consistent ongoing costs instead of swallowing a one-time expense?
• Slow implementation and decision making down instead of speeding it up?
• Embrace sunk costs?
• Imagine that your competition is going to be as afraid of change as you are? Even the competition that hasn't entered the market yet and has nothing to lose...
• Emphasize emergency preparation and the expense of a chronic and degenerative condition?

Is there a change that you need to make in order to be more like the person that God wants you to be?  Is there something you need to do differently in an area of your leadership that will help you better realize the dreams God has placed on your heart?  Change for the sake of change is not necessarily the answer. But change in order to bring a better tomorrow is something to embrace.