Risk Stops Change

We’ve been thinking about making the change to a new website for a while but we’ve always had more excuses than guts to make the change. 

And that’s true with any behavior change. Especially within organizations where behavior change could potentially impact your employment status, your income, your kids college funds… your life.  If the risk of change (or more aptly put – the PERCEIVED risk of change) is greater than the benefit of changing – then nothing changes.  #FACT.

When it came to our website/blog – our perceived risk was pretty big.  100% of our success can be attributed to this site, the networks that connect to it, our social media efforts… everything.  Everything we do pretty much uses this site as our home base.  We screw this up – we’re toast.

But if we don’t make the change – we’ll be toast anyway – just a slower pace. 

Making Risky Moves Safer

You know what needs to change to be better, more, greater, exceptional.  You also know there are risks.  To make those moves more palatable – make them safer.  Make it easier to be risky and make your employees want to take risks by eliminating the fear of failing. 

How?  Simple.  Here’s what I did when we moved the site – and they are analogous to pretty much any change  you want to make.

#1 – Understand the Risks

Don’t jump in without checking how deep the water is.  Make sure you fully understand what it is your doing.  Talk with people about their experiences.  Read.  And for the love of all that’s holy – google it.  There are a billion or so folks who probably have done this before – and you can find out what they did right and what they did wrong by simply googling it.  I’m still surprised in this day and age that people don’t think to google it.

#2 – Get a Sherpa

Someone in your network knows what’s going on.  They know more than you.  Talk to them.  Ask them for help.  See what they say.  Don’t rely solely on the google results – talk to a real human being (gasp – what?  That’s so 1990.)  Seriously, nothing beats a good ole’ fashioned conversation about the change your seeking to implement.

#3 – Study

Yeah – study.  Learn about what it is your change will mean.  Understand some of the technicalities.  Like this site.  We coulda hired a firm to do all the work and to call us when they were done and then just hit “publish.”  But we wanted to know a bit more.  How it works.  “What does that do?” type questions.  That opens up our minds to possibilities we may not have considered before.  We didn’t do it to be experts – we did it so we could engage more effectively with experts.

#4 – Have a Back Door

Always have a way out.  Never paint yourself into a corner.  I know Cortez burned his ships but he was an idiot and I’m not willing to risk my livelyhood on some bits and bytes flying around the interwebs.  In this situation – we still have the old site running.  It will for about a year.  It’s cheap enough and easy enough to do that.  So if this fails miserably – click, click, click – we’re back in business at the other site.  This is probably the one thing I see missing in most change initiatives.  They don’t plan for the possibility of failure.  And you have to.  Failure is a possible outcome and you need to be ready for it.

#5 – Push the Freakin Button

Finally, do it.  Yeah – this one is a sticky one.  It is the final leap off the cliff.  But if you’ve taken the time to understand the change and know what will/can/probably and may go wrong – and you have a back door.  It’s much, much safer.

We hope.

 

 

 

From I2I:

If you’re getting this update via RSS or email – great.  That means we did everything right.  If you’re not getting it… wait… you won’t be reading this if that’s the case… uh, oh.

This weekend we left our old site behind and clicked the “you can’t go back now, hope you did it right and what was I thinking” button and moved everything over to a new host and new site platform.  Yup.  We’ve moved.

Moving the site is a risk.  Some folks won’t find us now.  It’s possible that some RSS feeds may break.  It’s possible we’ll lose all our traffic, SEO juice, subscribers, etc.  In other words, it’s real possible this could be the worst decision ever. 

But… it’s also possible it is the best decision ever.  Time will tell.

(If you are reading this in an RSS reader or email subscription – pop out and see the site – let us know what you think.)