Andy Raynor - Beyond the Brief
Andy Raynor's blog
Flat hat, no whippet
It couldn't be, could it???
I was accused this morning of having a rose-tinted nostalgic vision of a South Yorkshire childhood. In my memory the terraced and council houses are pictures of dust-free perfection, ornaments perfectly arranged on the upright piano, the kettle is by the coal fire and the milk bottle is in a pan of water in the cool pantry.
The sturdy fellow* has overalls and carries a newly-soled shoe back from the shed, which smells vividly of creosote and linseed oil, its shelves lined with St Bruno tins containing nails and screws (a few oil-spots added and then shaken, to avoid rust). Dogs bark and insects flutter in the shafts of sunlight through the tall privet as the doctor’s Rover P4 squeaks to a halt by the gate.
This is all well and good if it’s confined to the rare wistful moment in my head, or the brain-free zone of Sunday evening ITV programs where a village up in the dales becomes the murder capital of the western world (“Genocide in Giggleswick”...a rejected script treatment).
What the mind forgets is all the other stuff – the wet walk to work after lighting fires in the freezing cold, the need for a daily shop, the 1,000 mile service intervals on the Rover and having to develop Popeye arms to turn the steering wheel.....aaah, Popeye....
Where am I going with this? Well, I’ve met with a number of people who have been wallowing in the impression that, in work, the past is always better than the present. I get the impression that, given the chance, half the population would still be watching two TV channels, communicating by letter and spending tea breaks (remember them?) talking about The Archers and chilblains.
There has to be a reason and perhaps it’s this: whenever you and I are asked to do something new, challenging, out of our experience or out of our comfort, we have a default reaction.
We don’t want to do it. We like it like it is.....even if we didn’t when it was first like that. We forget: new is not new for long. Abnormal is normal pretty soon.
So why spend the energy resisting or bellyaching?
Look, there are only three attitudes to change, and the faster we move to the third, the healthier we can be.
“What
will this change do to me?”
Step one – natural but negative and passive. The
assumption that there’s a truck coming at us and we
can’t stop it.
“What
will this change do for me?”
Step two – hang on, it might not be a
truck after all. Positive anticipation but again
passive, waiting for someone else.
“What
can I do with this change?”
Step three – active, positive, talking the initiative.
That’s the attitude.
All change – bar none – is greeted at first with suspicion, downheartedness, resignation. But all change that is good for a business has to be good for the vast majority of its people. Communicating, engaging with the issues openly will change the attitude to change itself.
And it is attitudes that change businesses - and lives - for the better.
*"Grandad", in case you wondered
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© Andy Raynor 2013