2016, People Power Transformation

As I wrote about last month, transformation is, well, transforming how we do everything. Now that may sound overly clever, but my point is we can’t continue to do things the old way and expect new results. We’ve seen this over and over where it’s the companies that are blowing up old paradigms that are staking their leadership positions for the future. Be it new disrupters like Uber, or established players disrupting their industries like Dominos, transformation is happening and it’s happening fast. The problem for many companies is they understand the why of transformation, but they don’t always understand the how. I plan on writing more about that in the coming months, but today I want to be a little more esoteric, because transformation doesn’t happen without people.

I’d like to share with you my New Year’s message that I shared last week with all of my colleagues here at Persistent. I am a big believer in empowerment, trust, autonomy and the tremendous results people achieve when they have a sense of purpose. Yes, we absolutely need to hit our numbers, but we do that not by thinking of them as targets but as goals, or even better as opportunities for each of us to realize our role in the success of the organization. With that in mind, the following is what I sent:

As my daughter gets older and I see her transform from a young girl to an independent spirited young lady, I can’t help but think about what the world has in store for her.  She will have opportunities that just a generation ago would be hard to imagine. Through technology, and right now it’s social media but who knows what it will be in 5 years, she will connect with people around the world, be exposed to different cultures, and gain a greater appreciation of life and what she can contribute. With just a couple of clicks, or for people of her generation a couple of touches on her mobile screen, she has the world’s information at her fingertips.  When you step back and think about it, it’s really quite amazing. Some people might be intimidated by that, I think it’s fantastic. 

You know, every morning I look forward to the challenge and the opportunity to make that day great. Problems arise, frustrations can vex us, things don’t always go as smoothly as we’d like, but that’s what makes life interesting and where we can show our mettle. If everything worked like clockwork, how would we differentiate ourselves?  How would we show our worth?  How would we get that internal satisfaction of knowing we made a difference? 

As we go into 2016, I’d ask each of you to think about that. It’s an old saying that anything worth doing is worth doing well, but it’s true. Every day is an opportunity.  Every day is precious.  What will you do with each day?  Life is too short to waste a single day. Whether it’s at the office, with your family, in your community, be passionate about what you do and make each and every single day count.

I’d love to hear from you. What do you think? What drives you? How do you bring that sense of purpose to everything you do?   As we set out on the first week of another new year, I couldn’t be more excited about the future. Matter of fact, I couldn’t be more excited about today!