Why Think Change

I changed my company name a few years ago from Engagementtoolbox to Think Change and I have had many people ask why I selected Think Change. The question is a good one because the belief or conversation around change is that people don?t like change so why chose that as a company name? I don?t believe people don?t like change, I just believe people don?t like change when it is not their idea and its forced on them with no explanation.

There is no shortage of information about change. If you Google change you will get 9,800,000,000 responses in 0.42 seconds. I don?t have the patience or interest or time to have a look at all those responses, so I am just going to share some of my viewpoints about change in support of my selection of the name Think Change for my company.

For starters; to Think you must have a growth mindset, you must be considering the possibility that whatever you are doing or thinking in the moment doesn?t represent all the possibilities. So, without getting in to the subject of change any deeper I have opened the possibility that whatever a current situation is or whatever a current viewpoint is doesn?t represent or restrict what could be. This is all I am going to say about the Think part of the Think Change name so we don?t get lost in the possibilities around just thinking.

A simple question; if you want to make progress in anything does it require you to change something? I believe the answer is yes, in fact I can?t think of an example when the answer would be no, can you? If you are a business person, can you grow your business without making some changes, even if its just a stronger focus here and there? If you want to improve your personal health can you do it without making any behavior changes? If you want your relationship to be better will it get better on its own or will it require some changes? If you want to perform better as a leader will it require you to make changes? Do any of the changes just mentioned sound negative or bad?

?The simple definition of change;

N: Make or become different. Take or use another instead of

V: The act or instance of making or becoming different

The above definitions don?t sound scary, do they? Perhaps the real challenge of the idea of change is that change means we are going to need to give up or let go of a comfortable belief or way of doing something that we feel very good about and it scares us to think there is a different belief or process that might serve us better. When we get locked in to something, we tend to want to hold on to it because if we let go of what we have been feeling good about before we can become comfortable with another way, we can feel like we have been thrown in to a rushing stream and have no anchor.

Lets look at another version of change that many of us may use to convert our thinking from one mode to another as we change roles. A good example of this kind of proactive positive change is used by my wife. She has always been interested in fashion and?she has learned?to create her own unique?style that gets many positive comments from a very random collection or people male and female, young and old. She enjoys the fashionista side of her life but she is also a wellness doctor and treats patients in her clinic. She wants to be the doctor in her clinic as opposed to the fashionista so how does the accomplish that? When she enters her clinic she takes the physical action of putting on her doctors coat and from that moment on she is a wellness doctor until the end of the day when she removes the doctors coat to return home of wherever she is going. This is a different kind of change and many of us use this ceremonial type of change to transition to and from various segments of our lives.

When I decided to change my business name to Think Change it was and is because I am in the business of helping businesses and individuals achieve the goals that are important to them and it always requires change, if only in mindset or becoming more mindful, it is still change. I want to be clear up front that I am in the business of facilitating positive change. To move from OK to Excellence requires change and it always will.

I work primarily with service businesses. In these businesses change is constant. Every customer or client is unique, and the experience being delivered is created one moment of energy at a time by the most complex delivery system in existence, the human being. Service businesses can not invest in the most sophisticated technology to produce and package a product and deliver it with guaranteed quality. They must find a way to create processes and systems including leadership characteristics that allow flexibility in dealing with potentially challenging and changing circumstances while still delivering on a service promise every time multiple times every day. All businesses must be aware of or ahead of the demands of their market and service businesses must be particularly aware as they must adjust the delivery of their customer experience and this usually requires change.

My point of all this conversation about change, particularly for the clients I serve, is that if my potential clients are not fully engaged in the idea that change is progress, I am the wrong service provider for them. In todays marketplace if a business is not always looking for a better way to do what it does or if an individual thinks they have everything figured out and they don?t need to change, they are clearly going backward.

My motto is change is good.