Ninety Percent of You Are Going Through Some Stuff.
And more than six in ten of you are overwhelmed by it.
The week before the holiday, I spent some time with the Canton Regional Chamber’s Tuesday Tip Club at Hot Shots talking about change.
The main idea of the talk was that what we often name as a dislike or fear of change is really a reaction to uncertainty. People, and SMB owners and leaders know this more than anyone, are not afraid of change per se. We’re always looking for ways to learn and grow and accomplishing things we didn’t even know were possible.
We are uncomfortable when there is a lack of clarity. When change is forced on us. When we’re given the procedure and not the context.
Preparing my comments led me to some pretty stark statistics from Gartner, Prosci, and LinkedIn:
90% of businesses are in the middle of some kind of change.
64% of people report being overwhelmed by that change.
Only 32% of those changes are going to be successful.
The antidote to the frustration and false starts is just as clear: clarity. Change that is effectively sponsored is successful at a rate of 3 to 1 vs. change that isn’t. Those successful changes are five times more likely to finish on schedule and nearly twice as likely to be on budget.
"Sponsorship" is what the data measures. What creates sponsorship is clarity. It’s naming the actual problem, the solution, and the priority. Without that, there's nothing to sponsor. That's the gap I help close.
There’s a 90% chance that you are going through change right now. As an SMB owner you wear many hats. I know because I do the same. I’m the analyst, solution designer, project manager and bookkeeper. I maintain the website, write the newsletter, answer the phone and emails.
What are you carrying right now? Bring it to Office Hours or schedule a Clarity Call.
PS. If you are interested, here’s a PDF of the deck
