What are your thoughts around change and innovation? Do you embrace new ideas and technologies or secretly hope you can avoid them until they all go away? Your answer to that question could decide how successful you'll be in your personal and professional life.
Over the past few weeks, we've watched as news leaks out of Iran of the civil unrest via Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook. This of course happens in spite of the "old guard's" attempt to silence the media. Ordinary citizens who have embraced these Web 2.0 technologies are communicating to the world while the Mullah's pathetically try to control it by banning journalists and beating rioters. People who embrace change can chart their own course in spite of opposition. If middle school teachers in the U.S. can't control technologies their students use to communicate, what makes these morons in Iran think they can do any better?
My point is this...the more you run and avoid change - and these are positive and negative changes - the more you'll have to face later. Would you rather deal with that cute little kitten now or wait a year when it turns into a full sized lion? Those who embrace change early on will have more control over it later.
So what can you do?
- Start reading up on new technology.
- Think of better ways you can do ordinary tasks and start being innovative
- Take a good hard look at your own perspectives. Are you open to new ideas or closed to them for no other reason than it's something new.
- Don't dismiss people who are looking to improve things. I know "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" is a comforting phrase, but if it breaks later on its own, it's going to be a lot worse.
Who would have thought 10 years ago that we'd be listening to music digitally on an iPod, shunning CD purchases or now, reading books digitally with a Kindle? Run from change long enough and you'll find yourself running into it!
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