Embracing Change
When I took the tagline of the "Agency of Change" last year, I had no idea how challenging a position this was going to be.
(Or, in English, "Wow, people really don’t like to change, do they?")
It may be ingrained in us. Consider the Newsweek article from 1995 that saw wide re-circulation this weekend, entitled, "The Internet? Bah!" It held such screamers as:
"The truth in no online database will replace your daily newspaper, no CD-ROM can take the place of a competent teacher and no computer network will change the way government works."
And:
"So how come my local mall does more business in an afternoon than the entire Internet handles in a month? Even if there were a trustworthy way to send money over the Internet–which there isn’t–the network is missing a most essential ingredient of capitalism: salespeople."
I’ll bet the author of that Newsweek piece wished that the magazine was still only physical, and that his article was comfortably moldering in garages and landfills, rather than splashed on the screens of 1.3 billion potential viewers.
But that’s been done to death. Let’s turn the timetable back a bit farther, and look at a story from 1957, where a character opines:
"Take this television they’ve been talking about, oh, for years now–and they haven’t got it yet. Who knows if they ever will?"
I’ll be willing to bet that if you could hop into a time machine, set the dials for somewhere in the 18th century, and drop into a parlor conversation of the day, there’d be plenty ready to decry the newspaper as being a waste of paper which would never catch on!
But, like it or not, change happens. Resist change, and younger, nimbler competitors will use it to their advantage. Sit back and say, "My website follows current best practices and benchmarks well against my competitors," and someone will find a way to do it better. Scoff at social media and say, "Well, it’s only for kids," and someone from your competition will be following Forrester or ComScore and know it isn’t "just for kids," and, in fact, 49% of US adults are expected to participate in social media this year.
Scary? We don’t think it has to be. Welcome to change. The change that brings opportunity.
April 6th, 2008 at 1:01 am
Yeah! It’s so nice to look back and see the same resistance, scorn and doubt was poured upon today’s “old” media when it was trying to find it’s feet, as new media such as virtual worlds receives today. The thing is that at least inside a related industry, the games industry, we’re no longer fringe crazies. No, now we’re mainstream crazies. ^_^
Thanks Jason for those words of wisdom and if it isn’t too forward and too honest, I may regurgitate the quotes from your post when I need to explain to laggards and doubters that really they are the ones painting themselves into a corner of their own making.
I actually think the laggards play an important role in the development of new ideas. Why? Because their resistance forces us to deal with our vulnerabilities and once we’re truly buff, we can kick the old technology’s butt. So we’ve gotta prove ‘em wrong to actually be right! Right?