In my work with troubled or growing organizations, the major challenge is helping owners, leaders and all team members to embrace the idea that the power to make things happen lies with them. Today, we are faced with a whole new configuration of personal, business and interactive challenges. The COVID-19 world presents what could be considered a no-win scenario because of its overreaching potential. We each need to choose where we will stand – to support and encourage change or to step away and choose the status quo.
With businesses and non-profits that we support, the first and most important step forward is helping team members realize that the choice for change is theirs. A friend once stressed to me that “the most powerful thing we have in life is choice.” With choice, we commit to a direction that is either forward or backward. Taking responsibility for our choices can be challenging because, then, we become accountable for outcomes. Yet, we always choose — even when we don’t select forward action. Not choosing to advance is a choice to remain stationary and. in time, move backwards.
“Your life does not get better by chance; it gets better by change.” – Jim Rohn
The opportunity to make choices is a powerful gift—get on the bus, get off the bus. When we can include others in the process to work collaboratively, gather information and suspend judgment, the results can move us much further than we thought possible. All of this must begin with our individual commitment to choose the path of change. It may seem like a risk but, as we know, change is the only real constant.
Recently, I had the great opportunity to interview the Managing Partners and Managing Shareholders of a small but select number of Accounting Firms. My focus: How were they surviving and, hopefully, thriving during this COVID-19 environment of uncertainty, rapid change and completely uncharted navigational protocols to deal with this sudden and dangerous influence in all of our lives? Several things shined for me during these interviews: these firms made their lives better and the lives of those around them better as well by:
- Going into action. When it was clear that remote workers were going to become the norm, they went into action full-bore. This was to act and they acted quickly because it was clearly the way to go.
- Being present. There were a million things to worry about but what was most important was to pay attention to all that was going on, while looking for those next steps forward—then act and act accordingly.
- Conversing at all levels. In their cases, connecting with team members, clients, other professionals was essential. Interacting and finding out what was happening, while building more enhanced relationships, would or could advance the well-being of all.
- The chaos that has ensued has forced us all to react in ways counter to how we might normally have responded. These firms did course-correct what they might have been doing and created new ways to embrace. This ranged from training and managing their team members to connecting with their clients on a whole new level and communicating in additional ways and experimenting with others.
Their success came because of the choice to be more relevant, more involved, more present. For more information, please see the article in California CPA magazine, August 2020, or please click on the link to my articles on Stowe Management Corporation below: Lessons Learned—Tax Season 2020 & Addressing the Future Successfully.
One way or another, conversation makes the difference. In our book Revolutionary Conversations: The Tools You Need for the Success You Want, we stress that Coming Alongside a situation is imperative to understand it before attacking it, changing it, criticizing it. Open ourselves to possibilities for opportunities that we might not see if we were to rely only on our hunches, previous experience or opinions.
Again, power comes from choice. Choose to change but change in a way that allows you to move forward and to move forward together. “Adapt together” was an especially good piece of advice that came from my interviews.
“The best thing you can do is the right thing; the next best thing you can do is the wrong thing; the worst thing you can do is nothing.” – Theodore Roosevelt
Embrace your individual power by choosing change. It can be a wondrous journey, full of many positive collaborations and experiences that you could never have imagined — unless you took the risk.
Try it. Positive change is on your horizon!
Copyright © 2020 Revolutionary Conversations, LLC. All Rights Reserved
REVOLUTIONARY CONVERSATIONS
Now, possibly more than ever in our history, we need to focus on communication – how we have conversations that move us forward — even when we are stressed beyond belief. Revolutionary Conversations™ and the S.H.A.R.E.™ Tools will give you a platform to develop soft skills and a roadmap to navigate any conversation. From the shop floor to the board room, from the office to the living room, these simple, elegant Tools, will help you build consensus and solve problems, create effective teams, increase engagement with employees, family and friends.
Buy it today and put it to work now!