Sunday, May 28, 2017

leadership dot #1822: change

Today's dot is written by Benjamin Unverhau from Hilbert College's Leadership Applications class:
It is a common saying in Buffalo that you can experience all four seasons in one day. In one week week the city could have temperatures in the high forties with lots of sun, then rain, and then back to twenty-degree weather. If I didn’t know any better, I would say that Mother Nature has some cold feet about changing seasons.
In the same way, many individuals and organizations sometimes fail to embrace the changing of the world around them, just as Mother Nature does not seem to want to let go of one season and transition into another. This can have dire consequences to businesses, such as Blockbuster, who became obsolete after the rise of Netflix. A similar threat is now facing private colleges in New York, who are being seriously threatened by the proposal of making public colleges free for households that are under a certain income level.
Sir Isaac Newton’s First Law states that an object at rest stays at rest, and an object in motion stays in motion, unless acted upon by an outside force. As a leader, we must often act as that outside force to push those who are under our responsibility to take the necessary steps to change. Change is rarely something that people look forward to, but it is often necessary for survival. If Blockbuster had made a move to enter the online market before it was too late, there may have been more than a handful of the stores left today.
The changing of the seasons is constant and unavoidable. Just like with the transitions in weather, we must accept that change is inevitable and learn to embrace it, or at the very least, not become obsolete by being set in our ways.

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