Embracing Change - How my children are teaching me?

During dinner last week, my wife and I were chatting about and smiling about several examples of our difficulties to visit a new restaurant to eat, when my children were young. My son loved to visit and experience new restaurants and would jump at every opportunity to try a new place. My daughter, who is the younger one, knew 2-3 restaurants we visited regularly and it became very difficult to have her try new restaurants. She would start to cry and it took a lot of convincing, before we got her to a new place. But it all changed, once she ate at the new place and found she liked the place, the waiters and the food. CHANGE to her had to be experienced, before she accepted it.

Fast forward to today. My daughter is in her first year of college, several hundreds of miles away from home and experiencing several new people, places, things and having to deal with change all the time. As parents, we are extremely proud of her ability to embrace change. My son continues to embrace change, as he knows it. The one common thing I see in the young people of today is that there is never a reluctance to accept change, as it arrives at a rapid rate.

In my workplace, change is hitting us even more rapidly than ever before. As our CEO, Mary Barra has quoted - The automobile industry will change more in the next 5 years than what it has changed the last 50 years. How do I as a leader embrace this change and ensure, I can learn and adapt, after 25+ years of working? Here are a few ways I am being open to change:

• Jump in and embrace the change that is asked of you

• Be cautious on which techniques work for you and which one doesn’t

• Study, Read, listen to and invite people to teach you the new process and techniques

• Engage others to help you start the journey

• Be open to failure and do it all over again

How do you deal with Change? I will love to learn of your experiences in the COMMENTS section.

March 06, 2016 - Raghu Raghuraman