Hello. Thanks for stopping by. If you would like to learn more about personal and organizational change, why not subscribe to the RSS feed. Or, if you're old school, Bookmark This Site

Ed. Note: Hi Stumblers! Thanks for stopping by. If you like what you see and want more, subscribe to my RSS feed, or sign up to receive updates through email in the right-hand sidebar.

Adaptive capacity refers to the ability of any system to respond to change and return to a state of balance. I first heard of this concept in relation to the nonprofit sector in the United States. However, it can be applied to ecological systems, any type of organization, and even individuals.

An example of adaptive capacity in an ecological system would be of a river valley experiencing heavy rainfall. For a time the water level in the river will be much higher than normal. Most of the time the river basin will absorb the water fairly quickly and the water level will return to normal within a day or two. However, if the volume of rain exceeds the river basin’s capacity, the river will flood.

Change Fatigue
When an organization or an individual has an excessive amount of change in a short period of time, something has to give. To build on my previous analogy, the system will “flood” or break down in some way. For an organization the “flood” may take the form of communication breakdowns, high turnover, and low productivity. For an individual it could be extreme stress, relationship problems, or even physical and mental health issues.

These symptoms of change fatigue occur because the system isn’t strong and flexible enough to adapt.

Building Adaptive Capacity
It is possible to build adaptive capacity in and organization in much the same way as it is possible to build muscles in a human body - through regular, sustained exercise. When an organization is proactively engaged in steady, small changes, it will be much better positioned to handle external changes when they come up.

Here is just a small sampling of exercises that can build adaptive capacity.

1. Scenario Planning. An in-depth look at scenario planning requires its own post. For the time being it is enough to know that the process involves a team envisioning possible futures and detailing plans for those futures. The idea is to have possible actions for many situations, so that the organization is prepared for as many outcomes as possible.
2. Cross Training. Many organizations are running so lean now that they don’t have adequate “bench strength” in the case of a team member absence. Cross training is definitely helpful during times like flu season. However, it’s also an advantage to have cross-trained members so that the organization has multiple perspectives to adapt and improve processes. One person performing the same job for years can become inflexible or run out of ideas for making changes. Multiple perspectives of the same job can build the capacity for adaptation and continuous improvements.
3. “State of the Industry” Meetings. Many fields, such as real estate, have annual, local forecast meetings. These meetings allow members of that profession to get together and discuss expert projections and their own hunches of the coming year. If you don’t work in one of these fields, you can still have your own information exchange sessions with other members of your organization. Assign everyone a sub-topic to research and discuss the findings among your team or the whole organization. In rapidly changing fields, a quarterly meeting might be even better.

Change is Easier When You Know What’s Coming
In many ways, building adaptive capacity is a lot like building your crystal ball gazing skills. It’s pretty hard to adapt to circumstances that you just couldn’t see coming. In fact, we usually call those events “crises” or sometimes “acts of terrorism!” The good news is that most change follows fairly predictable patterns. Through careful study and information exchange, most organizations in most fields will be able to get the big things right.

These are ideas that I’ve picked up through my studies and experiences within a few types of organizations. If you’ve had different experiences, or tips for building adaptive capacity, please share those in the comments below.

Photo courtesy of mwookie.

Have you ever been to a conference, convention or training event? Do you remember how excited you were to learn new things and meet new people? Did you walk away with about 800 new ideas? How long did that last and how many ideas did you actually implement?

If you’re anything like me, chances are you came back to office with a ton of handouts and great ideas, put them in a pile… and promptly forgot about everything you learned!

After doing this too many times, I’ve developed a few key steps for keeping the momentum going after an event.

1. Book a spot at the conference next year. If you feel energized by attending the event this year, chances are you’ll get the same motivational boost next year. Sign up as soon as you can so you have something to work toward.
2. Subscribe to the newsletter or email list. Most organizations that hold conferences have a mailing list of some sort. Keep connected to the group and the source of new ideas by subscribing.
3. Read all those handouts. Do it ASAP - on the plane ride home, if possible. Take lots of notes and pull out any action items that you would like to pursue.
4. Follow up with contacts ASAP. If you read this before you go to a conference - remember to make notes on business cards! Write down something to remind you of who the person is and what you talked about. Back at the office, send an email follow-up. Include any information you promised to exchange and give them at least one action item for their own follow-up.
5. Choose one thing to work on. I often feel overwhelmed with the amount of ideas I can generate over a 2 or 3 day conference. The key to moving forward is to find one project you can take concrete action on. It can be as simple as doing some follow-up reading or as complex as changing your career! Just pick the thing you most want to work on.
6. Share with others. The best way to learn is to teach, so find a way to share your learnings with your co-workers or supervisor. I’ve done short presentations at staff meetings and found that it helped me sort through all my material and get it straight in my head.
7. Slow and steady wins the race. Just because you learned a lot in a short period of time doesn’t mean that you have to act on it all at the same time. Try to plan out the changes that you can implement over a reasonable time period, then stick to your project plan. I aim to implement one small idea per week.

Conferences and conventions can be a great motivator over the short term. Keeping the buzz going takes some planning and work, but it’s a great way to keep your career moving forward.

If you have other suggestions for taking the next step after a conference, please tell us all about it in the comments.

It’s always a happy time for me when the new ChangeThis Manifestos are released. As a blogger interested in change, I’ve really started to look forward to seeing what authors they attract and the wisdom they have to share. This month’s releases include two manifestos that I really enjoyed.

Patricia Martin’s RenGen Manifesto makes some provocative assertions about our times. According to Martin, the world is on the cusp of a new type of Renaissance. The original Renaissance came at a time of great political turmoil and a questioning of society’s fundamental values. (Sound familiar?) It gave us the Protestant Reformation, great art and the birth of the modern university. I wonder what the next century has in store?

On a more prosaic level, Leslie Crutchfield and Heather McLeod bring us Change the Way You Change the World, which is a topic near and dear to my heart. Crutchfield and McLeod challenge nonprofits and NGOs to move beyond building mere programs, to creating movements. They argue that real social change comes through fundamental shifts in society - something that can’t happen just by giving out a meal or building a house. I couldn’t agree more.

For some people, my last post Suffer More to Change Faster might be a little bit of a downer. After all, suffering is pretty unpleasant, even if it leads to a good place in the end. Fortunately, suffering isn’t the only emotion that can inspire rapid change.

Excitement is the B-side of Suffering. When you are suffering, things are so bad that you just have to change. When you are excited, the future holds so many possibilities that you can’t help but change to make those real.

Comfort is Still the Enemy
No matter how you look at it, nobody wants to change when they are curled up at home in their snuggly pajamas with a cup of hot chocolate! When you are excited, you may not be unhappy, but you are certainly “wound up” and ready for action. That is very different from the type of contentment that a cat napping in a sunbeam feels. Just give a cat a little catnip to see a good visual representation of true excitement.

To change, you have to want things to be different than they are right now. That desire can come from a negative place, but it can also come from a very positive place. For example, I recently read the 4-Hour Workweek and was super inspired by the premise of the book. (In case you’ve been living under a cyber-rock, the book is about freeing yourself from the 9-5 grind through automatic wealth generation, among other things.) Now I’m exploring several ways of going about this very process because I want a radically different lifestyle than the one I am currently living. That comes out of a positive place, but it’s still based in a certain amount of dissatisfaction of my current life.

Create Excitement to Create Change
There are many times that we experience an initial rush of excitement, only to have it fade away. Then we get comfortable again and continue on the same path that we want to change. To me it seems absolutely essential to maintain and even grow excitement over time to use it successful as a change tool. Here are a few techniques that I have found effective in keeping my excitement high.

1. Use Visualization. Imagine the future that you want, as far out in time as you want to take it. Really focus and imagine as many details as possible. If you’d like create a backward storyline that follows the steps you took to get to that future. Repeat your visualization first thing in the morning, or whenever you need a motivational boost.
2. Read and Listen to Motivational Materials. I listen to a lot of podcasts and internet radio that I find motivational or inspirational in some way. Other people gain motivation by reading the stories of people who have accomplished amazing things. Still others watch movies that get their blood pumping. (Fight Club seems to be popular for this :shrug:)
3. Go to a Concert or Sporting Event. Sounds silly, but it works for me. If I’m feeling pretty blah about my life and my goals, I can get my energy up by going to a really great concert and taking in the energy of the crowd. Some people respond better to sports or plays. I think the key is that the event has to have a good sized crowd with really positive energy. Or maybe I’m just a human leech!

Actually, I’m really pumped up just from writing this article. Maybe I should add 4. Try to Help Other People Get Excited!

Are you feeling pretty comfortable in your life, but you feel the need to make some changes? Is your business at a plateau and you want to break through to the next level? If things are okay-but-not-great you can change your situation faster by creating discomfort within your present circumstances.

Comfort is the Enemy
Most people with the hardware and communications access to read this post have it pretty good in life. I’m going to make some assumptions here that probably apply to 99% of us: you have (more) than enough food to eat; you have a roof over your head every night; you have activities to fill your days; and you have enough money left at the end of the month for a small indulgence or two. In other words, most of the time, in most of the things you do, you are comfortable.

You may consider this a good thing. If you want to change, it’s not a good thing. Comfort is holding you back. If you are content with the way things are, you won’t be motivated to change.

A cat napping in a sunbeam is pretty content and comfortable. Generally, if you want to get that cat to move, you can:

• Wait for the cat to finish its nap and move on. Any cat owner can attest that this can take a loooong time!
• Spray some water on the cat, give it a nudge, or disturb it in some other way.

People don’t seem to be any different. Even though we may Plan to Change and Desire to Change, without enough motivation, we won’t take Actions Toward Change.

In thinking back on my post The Moment of Choice, I realized that I was able to make changes in my life more quickly at times when I was miserable. Here’s a personal example:

During my first semester as an undergraduate, I was a theater major. I had done some acting and writing in high school and really enjoyed it, so I decided to pursue formal training and see if I could make a career out of my art. The problem was, I didn’t really like the subject.

This was kind of an issue for a couple of months, but I was still new to college and having fun exploring my campus and new city. Plus, I did enjoy the discounted theater tickets and class outings that went along with my studies. I knew it wasn’t a good fit, but I just wasn’t motivated to do anything about it.

Until the Othello workshop.

I had a semi-crazy instructor for a theater class and one week our assignment was to memorize a monologue from Shakespeare’s Othello and workshop it. In this workshop, we were told to jump and run and skip and moan, and worst of all, Be The Punctuation. Now, I can “be” a lot of things – a baby, a rabbit, maybe even a car – but a semicolon?

How does that work, exactly? How does a semicolon act?

As I looked around the room filled with 20 other college freshman enthusiastically “being” the semicolon, I had an epiphany. Those people were not MY people. I had to change my major, immediately! And I did. By 5pm the next day, I had a new major (which is later changed, but that’s another story)!

Create Suffering to Create Change
I later realized that I could have save a lot of time by changing my major as soon as I began to feel like it wasn’t a fit. However, I was still far enough in my comfort zone that I didn’t feel motivated to do that. To get myself moving faster, I could have applied one of these techniques for increasing suffering and creating an effective mindset for change.

1. Take it to the Extreme. You may have heard of programs that get people to quit smoking by making them smoke so many cigarettes in a row that they literally turn green. That sounds kind of dangerous, but I think this could be applied to other behaviors safely. For example, I get annoyed by how much I say, “so…” to end a sentence. It makes me sound timid. To get over this habit, I could go around ending every sentence with “so…” for a couple of days which will aggravate me so much I will become totally self-conscious about it and quit.
2. Picture the Future. In this exercise, sit in a quiet room for five minutes and picture in painstaking detail what your situation will look like in five years if you continue on the same course. Imagine what type of people you will be around, what you will do, how much money you will have, how you will feel, even what clothes you’ll be wearing. Try not to exaggerate, just focus really hard on the behaviors and circumstances that will be present if you don’t make the change you are considering. I have definitely used this technique to decide if I wanted to continue relationships. At times when I have pictured the future, it wasn’t pretty! I realized that I needed to end a relationship to get more fulfillment out of my life.
3. Remove the Comfort Zone. At one point in my life I was very tight on money and realized that I needed to change my spending habits if I was going to stay out of debt. Because I didn’t have a lot of willpower to do that, I decided to put obstacles in place to make it more difficult to spend money. First, I stopped carrying more than $20 cash. I carried my ATM card, but it didn’t work as a debit card at the time, so I had to physically go to an ATM if I needed more money. I also had a very low limit on my one and only credit card. These obstacles helped me change my mindset over time, but I had changed my behavior almost immediately, which I had to do to be successful.

If you remove the tools, people, or circumstances that allow you to engage in an undesirable behavior, it becomes much harder to continue in your present path.

The point of this post is not to depress you. Rather, I hope I’ve inspired you to examine your own comfort zones and find ways to get away from them if you genuinely want to change. Of course, it’s okay to NOT want to change, but this should be an honest decision, and not a behavior brought on by entropy.

If you have other ways to accelerate a personal change, please share them in the comments below.