Develop the No. 1 Skill You’ll Need to Succeed Professionally 5, 10 or Even 20 Years From Now.
What’s the No. 1 skill you can begin developing right now to guarantee your success in the future — to be employable and promotable 5, 10, even 20 years from now?
The Ability to Adapt Easily to Change
If you’re surprised the top skill you’ll
need to succeed isn’t technology-based, you shouldn’t be. Business technology evolves so quickly that tech skills you learn today will get you today’s jobs but will be long obsolete a decade from now.
What won’t be obsolete in a decade is change. In fact, the rate of change has been accelerating exponentially since
1990 — and will only continue to accelerate in the business world as
well as in society.
Those Who Adapt Survive and Thrive
That’s why business gurus agree: Those who learn to cope with change
— to see change as an opportunity instead of a serious problem — will
survive and thrive in business and industry in the 21st century.
The changes we face are dizzying. Organizational
structures are changing as departments and divisions disappear, only to reappear in new guises. Individual roles are changing, with employees
reassigned or shuffled from one department to another. Hierarchical lines are changing, middle-management expectations are changing, organizational
attitudes are changing as businesses merge, restructure, and retrench
on the rocketing rollercoaster of the U.S. economy.
4 Key Abilities for Future Success
To succeed in this increasingly fast-paced business environment, you must develop and maintain four key change-related abilities:
- The ability to recognize what isn’t working
- The ability — and willingness — to modify and
adapt to change as necessary
- The ability to motivate others through the change
transition
- The ability to live with ambiguity and discontinuity
How Adaptable to Change Are YOU?
The toughest of these skills, of course, is the second: to be willing
to change and adapt. Why is that so difficult? Because most of us wish
change would go away! As soon as we begin to feel comfortable and at
ease with our job and career, along comes some major change, and it
seems we’ve got to start all over again. It’s like the old saying: The
only person who likes change is a wet baby.
True, some people are simply more adaptable
than others. Highly adaptable people who take to change easily generally
either …
- Love a challenge that stretches them beyond their
comfort zone
OR
- Crave variety and new experiences in their work
Then there’s the rest of us — the majority of professionals who can find it difficult to adapt quickly to major
change. If that describes you, it’s generally because you …
- Need control and dislike the uncertainty that
change inevitably brings
OR
- Want security, preferring what’s known and familiar
over risk-taking
Becoming more adaptable: change management
strategies
Luckily, the ability to adapt to change is a skill that can be learned,
just like any other skill in the workplace. Below are four change management
strategies guaranteed to help you become more adaptable so that you
can use change to your professional advantage.
- Be proactive in dealing with change.
Change doesn’t wait until we’re ready to deal with it. Being proactive
means assimilating and integrating the change as quickly as possible.
If you take a wait-and-see attitude, you’re likely to miss a vital
change opportunity. To be proactive, you must:
- View change as an opportunity.
- Be ready and willing to adapt quickly.
- Immediately assess how the change can fit into
your current work practices.
- Envision best-case scenarios for the change.
- Take control of change instead of
letting it control you.
Change generally brings about either continuous improvement or continuous
chaos. Improvement comes when you’re in control of the “change
vehicle.” Without that control, expect chaos to rule. To take
control of change, you must:
- Prepare yourself mentally by thinking about your
job after the change has occurred, rather than dwelling on how your
job was or is now.
- Prepare physically by getting plenty of rest,
eating well and exercising often. This is important because change
is a known stress-inducer and your body will react to stress. Learn
ways to minimize your stress.
- Prepare emotionally by letting go of your comfort
zone and releasing those old, confining habits. Experiment with
moving beyond the boundaries of your day-to-day routine.
- Discard self-pity. To be resilient, adaptable
and productive, you can’t act like a victim.
- Make a list of all the positives that the change
will bring for you and others. Use this as your motivator when you
feel bogged down.
- Train and retrain.
Mastering new skills through training and retraining is crucial
to successful change management. Adapting to change by learning
new skills can be hard work, but it brings considerable rewards:
- Recognition — Those in the position to promote
will notice the additional skills you’ve gained and the initiative
you took to learn them.
- Control — Once you’ve mastered the skill, you’ll
be more in control of the situation and feel more comfortable with
the change.
- Peer acceptance — You don’t want to be one of
the few hold-outs who can’t or won’t learn new skills. Training
and retraining puts you on equal footing with others on the team.
- Makes you more valuable — The more you know and
the more skills you possess, the more valuable you are to your organization and to other companies.
- Position yourself to excel.
Change offers those who accept it and adapt quickly the chance to
shine while others flounder. What’s more, change often provides
you with opportunities that can lead to rewards, recognition or
promotion. The key is to position yourself to take advantage of
the change. To position yourself to shine, you must:
- Determine immediately what new skills, training
or knowledge you’ll need to excel after the change occurs and start
retraining NOW.
- Create a specialist niche for yourself and become
the expert. Be the resident guru on that topic.
- Try to predict what will occur after the change
and how it will all play out in your organization. Then position
yourself accordingly.
Effective change management is the gateway
to your future success: Adapt to change, and you will survive and thrive
in our rapidly changing business world. Learn to recognize the opportunities
change can offer you — and to cope with change effectively —
and your professional potential in years to come will be unlimited!
(PDF format)