“Innovation” = people cheer.
“Change” = people cringe.
“Innovation” makes people think of progress, strategy, and beating the competition.
“Change” often makes people think of struggle, frustration, and having to rebuild something they thought was working just fine to begin with.
But innovation can’t happen without change.
So we should LOVE change! But why don’t we?
When people hear a change is happening, they think of past changes they’ve experienced. It might be change that happened without their input or their control. It might be change that happened without a real purpose or payoff. It might be change that happened just for the sake of saying “look! We changed!”
So while you can’t have innovation without change, you CAN have change without any real innovation. And going through those kinds of changes too many times? The changes that change the disrupt the peace but don’t actually improve very much?
Those changes make us exhausted and wary of the next change.
Leaders, let’s reframe our changes by talking about not just what’s changing but what we’re innovating. What’s improving. What we’re taking to the next level. And how the change benefits EVERYONE involved.
When you put the change into context like that, when you lead with the payoffs and the value, you’ll be more likely to get everyone on board.
