Fancy eyeballs for dinner?
International speaker and writer, Hilary Corna, used to be Senior Executive Officer at Toyota and had responsibility for implementing change. She’ll be joining us at BlueSky Tokyo in March, when we visit Japan to learn how culture can be such a powerful change agent and how it can be responsible for driving systemic improvement.
I saw Hilary give a talk where she described being served eyeballs for dinner and it caused me to ask what I would do in the same situation. Would I risk offending my host and refuse to eat them or would I throw caution to the wind and get stuck in?
This then got me thinking about the last time I tried something completely new and different and a straw poll of a dozen people suggests that many of us haven’t deviated from our normal in any respect in a long time, and that’s worrying and has significant implications for your business.
Let me repeat a question I recently asked – is your industry changing or are you changing your industry? Because it’s one or the other. Either you’re taking control of change or others will shape your future. And to get really good at change takes practice, just as with nearly everything else. And like a muscle, the more you exercise, the more changes you try, the easier they become.
Ed Percival, a business coach who had a profound impact on my thinking over many years, encouraged the idea of a “do different” every day. Ed observed how people slept on the same side of the bed, sat in the same chair, ate the same things for breakfast, lunch and dinner, watched the same TV shows, listened to the same radio stations and read the same newspapers and magazines. Many people get dressed in the same sequence, drive the same route to work, start every meeting in the same way and approach a problem or opportunity in a set manner. We are literally creatures of habit. And whilst there are many advantages of operating on autopilot, putting socks on for example really shouldn’t necessitate thought as to whether left or right first, there are many times when habits get in the way of creativity and new ideas. One example of this has been local press advertising with many agents taking a decade or more to realise that whilst it still has a place in the marketing mix, its impact is massively reduced. Indeed, every week I see an agent showing off a photo of their DPS in the local rag on twitter, (primarily to an audience of other agents)!
The more you practice small changes the easier it will be to make the bigger, more important and significant ones when the time is right. For that reason I urge you to think of a “do different” every day – perhaps not eating Tuna Eyeballs for your supper, although I’m sure we can procure you some if you come to BlueSky Tokyo where, for certain, every agent that accompanies us will have their eyes opened to new possibilities and ideas.
If you’re interested in joining us on the business trip of a lifetime, get in touch today. Just 3 places remain and booking closes soon.
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