Why is it that I resist change so much? If opportunity is found in change, you would think I would embrace it. When I asked people if they enjoy change, I found that about 25% do. What if there were no changes? Wouldn’t life become dull after a period of time? It would start to feel like the repetitive day in the movie “Groundhog Day” with Bill Murray.
As we continue our trip around the sun, we just celebrated the fall equinox. It reminded me of the cyclical nature of life. Our days are now becoming shorter than our nights. In my garden, the pumpkins and acorn squashes are the last holdouts, and here in West Michigan, the trees are just beginning to show their fall colors.
The cyclical changes of the season, give us a glimpse of the future once we recognize the recurring pattern. Our economic expansion and contractions reflex a similar cyclical pattern of the business cycle. My business is based on taking note of the changes happening inside of companies and in their business environments. The patterns within these changes allow us to predict the probability of the firm’s expansion or contraction.
Fortunately for me, my spouse is extremely good at anticipating change and preparing us for it. She anticipated our need to move into a condo with no stairs and walk-in showers prior to my knee replacement and the need for the lower maintenance that the condo requires of us. The relentless linear change brought about by the aging process has had a way of sneaking up on me. She, on the other hand, doesn’t get duped by the slow-moving process of this change.
It has been said that the only constant is change. If so, why does it happen, and what can (or should) we do about it?
Predicting the Future
In our predictive analytic work, we ask ourselves the question, what has changed inside the company or in its business environment? We look for the pattern within these changes to help us predict the likelihood that a company will relocate or expand soon.
If there is motion, there is change. Change is a constant. When motion is rotational, change becomes cyclical and, thereby, predictable.
At the atomic and subatomic levels, electrons are rotating around the nuclei. At the astronomic level, our Earth is rotating around the sun which brings us our seasons, the sun is rotating inside the Milky Way galaxy and, in turn, our galaxy is rotating within the universe.
Many years ago, I was attending an ashram, and I asked the guru, why do things change? His response was, “Isn’t it enough just to know? Now what are you going to do about it?” Ever since that encounter, I have been searching for the answer to his question.
What is changing in your world, and what are you going to do about it? What opportunities do these changes create for you?