Seth
Godin made a great statement about change today:
“Change doesn’t
always happen slowly. It tends to happen quickly in areas where people don’t
care. In the areas where the worldview is widespread and the stories are
durable, change is much more difficult.”
Let’s put this
statement to the test!
Think about a
change that was slow and difficult. Now
think about one that was relatively easy. Is he right?
I, of course,
have my own opinion, but I’d like to hear yours before I volunteer mine!
Stay tuned.
Technorati tags: Business, "Seth Godin", Story
Great points!
I’ve been thinking that a worldview can also be positive or negative. If the worldview of something (say technological advancement – as Ed pointed out) is positive, then perhaps that view enables change to occur more quickly. For example, the time it takes to adopt new technologies seems to get shorter and shorter. The other thought that occurred to me was that “durable stories” is another way of saying tradition (culture). Change does tend to slow down when the stories of the past can’t reconcile with the desired stories of the future. I’m going to chew on this some more and see if I can’t come up with something more tangible.
Ed – I think you’re dead on that it depends upon the type of change in question.
Change is always happening. It decreases in intensity and accelerates depending on all sorts of variables. What I find is that people will change when there is a compelling reason. If there is none, or it is force without real choice, they will resist, even if it is in their best interests to do so. I think Seth needs to differentiate between types of change. Technological change within an organization or a community can have dramatic effects quickly. However, cultural change is much slower to happen. So it depends …
Sometimes people don’t want to change just for the sake of tradition, even if the tradition makes no sense or is outdated. Those are the things that frustrate me the most, whether it’s personal freedom or corporate change.
The worldviews that are widespread tend to be those that are tested to the point that everybody accepts things that way, (and there was probably a good reason for it). One “no duh” example is that it’s generally considered evil to kill people. If we didn’t mostly share that principle, the human race might not have survived.
I wonder, is it really about how widespread the worldview is, or is it about how attached people are to it. In my experience, the pace of change is usually held up not by a group, but by one or two individuals who have very personal and compelling reasons for being attached to the “old” worldview (e.g., loss of job, fear of losing status, fear that they will become outmoded, etc.). These few then make it their mission to derail the change.