Be The Change You Wish To See In The Workplace

Any person, at any level of the org chart, can – and must! – make the change their organization needs to survive and thrive in these turbulent, ever-changing times.

Right now. Right where you are.

CEO Patti Johnson’s two-year, intensive study of people who bring positive change to organizations culminated in a phenomenal book, Make Waves. It is one of my top 2 or 3 reads for all of 2014 so far – and as a guy who averages about a book a week, that’s saying a lot!

What do all her Wave Makers have in common? They follow a simple – though not easy – formula to success:

Think. Know. Do.

Think about what is needed – and what drives you as a potential agent of change – to bring significant, beneficial change to your company or industry.

Know all you can about your topic, by teaching yourself if you must – and learn as you go if you have to, like the young leader at Pepsi who had to “build the plane as he was flying it.”

Do. Don’t hesitate. By all means, don’t wait for someone else to make it happen for you. No matter whether you’re a CEO, a vice president, or a new hire – or even if you’re a medical school student who has a vision to manufacture high quality polo shirts, like one of the wave makers in Patti’s study – roll up your sleeves and make it happen!

Some quotes from Patti:

• “A lot of people have started important changes. It often starts with a little decision.”
• “It’s not just about what you do. It’s about how you think of the world around you.”
• “Some of my favorite examples of wave makers in the book are people literally at the beginning of their career. They were people without any knowledge, with no experience, who get inspired and set about educating themselves.”
• “Conventional wisdom would say, ‘What are you doing, you’ve got to be kidding me!’ But a lot of the people in this book don’t listen to that and they just go out and do it.”
• “Wave makers are voracious learners. It’s in their DNA.”

 (Can’t see the video? Check it out HERE)

Buy Patti’s book on the Business Heretic’s Bookstore

Read Patti’s posts here on ExchangeGain

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Image credit: yarruta / 123RF Stock Photo

Ted Coiné

Ted Coiné is a Forbes Top 10 Social Media Power Influencer and an Inc. Top 100 Leadership and Management Expert. This stance at the crossroads of social and leadership put him in a unique perspective to identify the demise of Industrial Age management and the birth of the Social Age. The result, after five years of trend watching, interviewing and intensive research, is his latest book, A World Gone Social: How Companies Must Adapt to Survive, which he co-authored with Mark Babbitt. An inspirational speaker and popular blogger, Ted is a pioneer of the Human Side of Business (#humanbiz) movement. He is also a serial business founder and three-time CEO. When not speaking at conferences and corporate functions, Ted advises CEOs on how to become Truly Social Leaders, or “Blue Unicorns” as they put it in A World Gone Social, in order to bring their companies into the Social Age. Ted’s advice: “Change is only scary if it’s happening to you. Instead, bring the change your competitors dread. That is something only a Social Age business leader can accomplish.”