Imagine you’ve spent a nice day building a sandcastle at the beach. After several hours, you’ve got something to be proud of but you know that the rising tide or just one big wave will wipe out all of your work.
Now imagine that you’ve spent a nice 10 years building a career. After years of hard work, you’re proud of where you are and what you’ve done. But what’s that out in the ocean? It’s a wave of change…and it’s coming straight for your ‘sandcastle’! You worry it will wipe out all you have worked for and woosh….suddenly you’re in a new role in a new department and you’ve got to start all over.
This article on approaching change like a skill instead of an event got me to thinking about some of the companies I’ve worked with. Employees at newer and smaller companies expect and even welcome changes…at the expense of their sandcastles getting destroyed on a regular basis. On the other hand, employees at older, larger companies have gotten used to building their sandcastles on the shore of the lake…where there is no tide and only the occasional pontoon boat makes a ripple.
If you’ve built your sandcastle at the lake over decades with detailed ramparts and moats, a wave of change (which will inevitably come) is a huge disaster! How will you ever get all of those grains of sand back in place? It feels like a hopeless cause…and that’s a good thing.
Wait, what!? How can the destruction of my years of hard work be a good thing? Well, I have a dirty little secret to pass along…your castle was probably outdated! I know turrets and moats were all the rage 20 years ago but since then we’ve created security cameras that can warn you when there’s any motion outside…and installing one of those in your sandcastle would take A LOT of work. Even though the change is painful, it’s an opportunity.
Like those famous sandy philosophers, The Beach Boys, said, “Catch a wave (of change) and you’ll be sitting on top of the world!” It is a difficult thing when something that you’ve worked hard on suddenly changes. If you can treat those changes as opportunities, you’ll see the waves of change NOT as sandcastle destroying opportunities but a chance to learn something new…surfing!