Visualizing your change management goals

PICTURE: Helge V. Keitel, Conference (2004)

I didn't actually say those words out loud; I just approached the building and was walking up the stairs to the conference room. 

Five minutes later, I was facing one hundred people or so people sitting in the  community center meeting room. Start speaking about Change Management!

My task was to speak about “Ymmärrystä yrittämiseen” – understanding entrepreneurship.  I was trapped with the idea of change management. Starting a new company was all about doing things in a different  way.

It took me a few minutes to work up my nerve before I finally got to the essentials. Speaking about start-ups, open innovation and change management was more difficult than doing the same things in real life.

Several years later: I’m struggling with the delicate task of moving real-life experiences and public presentations to Internet and Social Media.

I want to do it My Way! And I’m still facing the same challenges as any start-up.

Are you able to make changes?

Enthusiasm, passion, engagement, risk-taking, the ability to think differently and to transform thoughts to action are essential personality ingredients for innovators and change makers.

The big challenge is always to get started with innovative processes; to overcome friction and inertia. It’s so easy to get tired and de-motivated. Those who make new things do always face opposition and down-right hostility. Change makers are regarded as trouble makers, revolutionaries and unpredictable eccentrics.

Innovators and inventors need endurance. A network of like-minded people supporting change and invention might be a helpful in situations when the fight for what is right is getting though.