As small business owners we are not always willing to except change, which could be hurting us in the long run. Recently, a very good web designer and friend of mine was discussing the difference between HTML websites and dynamic websites and how many people are afraid to change to dynamic websites. Now web design is Greek to me but from what I know about HTML sites and dynamic sites, dynamic sites are much easier to create, fix and update and the great thing about dynamic sites is that you can still have control over what content you put in and when you put the content in. With dynamic sites, the site owner can have direct control over content, without learning code, like a site builder, only without the restrictions that a site builder has. Changing to a dynamic website, in my opinion, would be in the best interest of those who want websites but yet, they are afraid to change.
Also, I recently saw a post on one of my networking sites asking why people are so reluctant to hire remote workers. There were two answers that caught my attention. One was that they were afraid to give up control and the other was that they were afraid of change. You give up control any time you get help. If you want to grow, you HAVE to delegate some responsibility to others, you just do it intelligently so you choose where you give up the control, and so that it is in non-essential things. If you don’t, then you lose control without being able to prioritize where you lose it. Change on the other hand, can be learned and done successfully.
Before completely writing off any change that may be thrown at you ask yourself a few questions. How can this benefit me? Is it more efficient? Is it cost effective? How much of my own time and money do I need to put into this change? How will this help me in the future? How will this help me now? If the change is going to obviously pay for itself, it is a no-brainer. If it won’t, then it probably isn’t time yet.
As with any change, there may be learning curves but most changes only require a small amount of learning. Due to this small amount of learning, people are fearful of embarrassment so therefore they are reluctant to try something new. The fact is that without embarrassment you don’t learn. How many times have you made mistakes and been embarrassed by them? Now, how many times have you learned from those mistakes?
Constant change has less of a learning curve than infrequent change. If we learn and grow under a state of fluidity, we are always expanding, and the bits of learning are small each time. If we put it off, we then have a bunch to learn at one time, which overwhelms us.
So remember, not all change is bad. If you embrace change, you may not reap the rewards in the short term, but you will in the long term.