Published: Tuesday, October 06, 2009 in articles » management by Thomas Baekdal
The absolute worst expression I know is "you shouldn't change for the sake of change". Every time I hear that, my blood begins to boil and I get really annoyed. If you shouldn't change for the sake of change, then when should you?
Should you change when you competitors are taking over your market and steal your customers? No, that is too late.
Should you change when you can no longer buy spare parts, or the get material you need? No, same problem.
So when should you change?
Should you change when the market grows to a certain size? Well, yes. But you would be much more successful if you had been the one who changed the market. Apple could have made just another Smartphone, but they decided to create the iPhone and changed the market. Apple could also have decided to simply make an MP3 player, but the integrated the iPod into iTunes and changed the music industry.
Should you change when a specific need arises? That is actually a good one. A lot of successful companies are making fortunes doing just that. The problem with this, however, is that people who say "you shouldn't change for the sake of change" would never see this in time.
Just look at Google. They are currently working on Google Wave, possible the next generation email platform. And you might say that they are merely trying to solve the collaboration problems we have today with email. But they didn't start making it today. They started several years ago.
Back then there was no specific need for the change to happen. It was simple a couple of people who had a vision, so they decided to ‘change' something.
Change is the key to staying successful. If you don't change you lose.
There are two far more important reasons why you should change.
Being successful means being a leader. If you want to be successful on Twitter, then you need to a person that people want to follow. If you want to create a tribe, you need to lead the tribe.
And you cannot be a leader by watching where other people go. You need to be the one who facilitates change.
Everyone knows that you need to be an innovator to succeed. Companies that do not focus on innovation will eventually lose. Just look at Yahoo! They forgot the concept of innovation (for a while) and started to focus on ‘business stability', and look how that turned out.
Microsoft forgot to innovate IE, and suddenly Firefox swooped in. Samsung forgot to innovate and Apple swooped in. The Republican Party forgot to innovate how they connected with their voters, and Obama swooped in and became president.
What does it mean to be an innovator? Well, "innovation" is simply another word for "change". Innovation means changing the status quo... or to use a better phrase "change for the sake of change".
An innovator is one who wakes up every morning and says "today I am going to change something".
Change is the single most important thing that you must do, both as a person and as a company.
Changing for the sake of change doesn't mean that you should change everything all the time. That would be silly. It means that you need to change the important parts of you business.
You can divide this into 3 categories:
Please, change for the sake of change.
Writer, Social Media Advocate, Project Manager and Internet Manager
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James, I agree with you. Change is far more useful (and potentially successful) if the person working on it has a vision for what you want to achieve.
What I am trying to say is, that as a company, and as a strategy. Then you need to change all the time. And you need to work on changing what you do tomorrow, and the day after that.
And the best way to explain that, is for me to say: Change for the sake of change. Once you start changing only when you have a need, or an idea, then you are starting to fall behind.
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Hi Thomas,
Nice article. I agree with the generally idea here - that companies need to think about continuous innovation. However, I think the phrase 'change for the sake of change' can confuse somewhat. It can imply to keep changing with no direction.
If companies were to keep changing, everything would be in a state of flux, resulting in confusion. Some of the big airlines are a good examples of this. Aer Lingus tried to copy the low-cost model - as in RyanAir. But then they changed back (somewhat..) again to their old model. Successive change here didnt work - they didnt appear to have a very robust strategy.
Companies also need to work out what innovation they are good at and do it well. As Jobs once said
"Pretty much, Apple and Dell are the only ones in this industry making money. They make it by being Wal-Mart. We make it by innovation."
Writer, Social Media Advocate, Project Manager and Internet Manager
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Eoin, I agree with you, which was also why I added the last section to the article "Should I change everything all the time?"
The problem is that planning innovation often stifle the process, and companies end up being one huge focus group that is all talk, no walk.
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Oct 6
2009
James
I disagree, I think change is based on the concept (ideally) of improvement, not 'for the sake of change'.
Your describe Google's wave project as being 'a couple of people who had a vision, so they decided to ‘change' something.'
They decided to create 'change' not for the sake of change but because they saw a better way of doing things that would find a place in a future market.
Same goes for your arguments regarding change as making one an industry leader or for innovation. The reasons for change in these cases is again, not for the sake of change but for the reasons you yourself brought up. The problem is that change for the sake of change is a thoughtless process, to contradict it with an equally annoying phrase;
'Look before you leap'.
PS: Well-written and as usual, on an interesting and evocative subject. Keep up the good work ;)