Our comfort zone gives us peace of mind and makes us feel safe. But the reality is that in an interconnected and constantly changing world, security cannot come from a company, which may not overcome the necessary transformations, but from our future employability, from our proven ability to create value in the new digital economy.
The starting point for today’s conversation is this: in a time like this, marked by accelerated changes, we cannot limit ourselves to surviving changes under the shelter of our comfort zone. SContinuing like this for a long time, performing coordination and management functions that are destined to disappear, can negatively affect our future employability, since our professional skills are becoming outdated while the environment changes at an accelerated pace. The comfort zone, in a world of accelerated change and where the future is less and less an extrapolation of the past, has become for many professionals, the zone of greatest danger.
When we talk about comfort zone from a professional perspective, we are referring to that position in the organizational chart, which we have been occupying for many years and in which we feel safe, comfortable and protected. The problem is that in order to interact with the new reality, develop professionally and create new perspectives that make a new reality possible in our lives, we have to leave the comfort zone, which means taking the risk of abandoning the known for the unknown. But… and if it is true that the riskiest option is not change, but to stay in the comfort zone, would you dare to leave this zone to explore the enormous opportunities offered by a new world in which everything is to be done.
Many times we are convinced that we have to be in a certain way, and the possibility of change is terrifying to us. We live trapped in a reality that others have built for us. All we have to do is step out of our comfort zone and into our innovation zone; It is about experiencing changes as an unparalleled opportunity to build a new reality, instead of fighting them vigorously with small improvements over what we have always done.
Organizational Change Management
To
manage organizational change
, it is necessary to change our attitude and put aside our routine. It is about moving from managing the known to exploring the unknown. It is about ceasing to be victims and becoming true protagonists of our future, focusing on what gives meaning to our lives and is important to us, taking smart risks when others opt for security, moving resources from the past to the future and learning from our mistakes, transforming the contingencies we encounter along the way into future opportunities.
How to get out of your comfort zone at work?
Start with your personal agenda. If you don’t have a personal agenda, it’s highly likely that you’re part of someone else’s agenda. Therefore, it is about establishing an action plan to transform yourself and to introduce a new practice in your life and take those first steps outside your comfort zone. It will be practically impossible for you to understand the new reality if you remain absorbed in your usual routine. The idea is that, at least for a few hours, you will be able to get out of the mail and the demands of “day to day” to explore the new reality and develop the new skills necessary to successfully tackle the future. It’s about creating the time you need to explore the enormous possibilities of the collaborative era.
Take smart risks, risk what you can assume. Risks are often the biggest impediment we have to get out of our comfort zone and take action. We all find it difficult to make decisions where the risk exceeds a certain threshold of discomfort. But believe me, in the current situation the biggest risk is to do nothing. Eliminate the pressure, start the journey simply, from curiosity and observation of what is happening around us, consider that your decisions are temporary, and that later you will return to them again. Overcome the fear of failure and to make mistakes, take the risk that is affordable for you, do not make it an all-or-nothing issue. Build your future, taking smart risks and moving your resources from the past to the future.
Be a management rebel. You don’t need to agree with everyone all the time. It challenges the status quo, questions the old ways of working that only made sense in the past and that emerged to solve problems that are no longer relevant to the organization. Our ability to address the enormous challenges of a hyper-connected society is ultimately contingent on our ability to question the management model we have inherited from the industrial age, that set of bureaucratic practices that encourage clientelism, discourage transparency, thwart experimentation, discourage creative thinking, and overvalue previous experience over creativity and experimentation.
Connect with collective intelligence. Learn the new language of collaboration with the same zeal with which you learned English in your day to ensure a future in any multinational. Build real and lasting partnerships, surround yourself with positive and innovative friends and collaborators, avoid the “passion killers” that consume your energy. Actively participate in the most relevant blogs and social networks for your profession or sector and, when you consider that the time has come, publish your own and create your own personal brand to make yourself known and establish your network of contacts.
Learn to unlearn and relearn. Unlearning is essential to see the current reality from a different perspective, to be receptive to changes and to do things in a fresh and new way. It is essential that you abandon habits and methods that have served you well in the past, but are a burden to address the future. Only by unlearning can you approach a future that is at least an extrapolation of the past, only by weighing the validity of your past experience against the current reality, can you generate new perspectives, which make a new reality possible in your life.
Launch your lifeboats. Undertake small personal innovation initiatives that allow you to transform, little by little, the structures and processes that now govern your daily life and that of your organization. It is, in short, about creating the environment and making it possible for something extraordinary to happen around you; something that opens the doors to new possibilities that are there, but that you will hardly be able to see if you do not change your daily routine and leave your Comfort Zone.
It is, therefore, a matter of innovating to live a richer life; a life that will allow us to develop our full potential as people. Unlike the comfort zone, the personal innovation zone is a “special attitude” that is revealed in all our actions: a commitment to be better every day in everything we do; the ability to see ourselves not for what we are today, but for what we can become; a way to approach the future to our full potential; the curiosity and open-mindedness necessary to interact with the outside world, without fear of making mistakes, aware that we learn from our mistakes and that only by exploring the unknown can we find new perspectives and discover new realities that will help us achieve a profound change in ourselves and in our lives. Do you dare?
Change management and digital transformation
If you are facing the challenge of digital transformation of your company, remember that it is not only a matter of technology, but of change management within your organization, of establishing a new culture and way of working. If you need guidance or advice from a Expert consultant in digital transformation,
contact us!
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