Re-thinking New Year's Resolutions

So here it is, the middle of February, and you have probably given up on any New Year’s resolutions you valiantly made at the start of the year. Or perhaps you haven’t given up on all of them, but you have decided to postpone working on them until you are “not as busy” or “later in the year.”

I won’t get started on a rant about New Year’s resolutions, but I do want to connect the concept with changes we consciously make.

A business’s stability and success is dependent upon their ability to adapt and to embrace change—change in the market, change in the way things are done, and change in people and society. Each of those is a very broad category that ultimately affects individual people and day to day actions.

When you reframe how and what you think about change, it becomes possible to embrace and accomplish it. Where many businesses go wrong is in the execution; they give it a lot of thought, but never act on those thoughts. Simply talking about change or thinking positively about it is not going to generate results. Growth comes from the discomfort caused by change and learning.

NASA did a study to learn how long it takes a person’s brain to rewire or change neurological paths to form a habit. What they found was that it took 25-30 CONSECUTIVE days of performing the desired action before the wiring in the brain changed.

Executing change in a business becomes difficult then, because the tribe cannot practice the implemented change for 25-30 consecutive days given weekends. Unfortunately, the brain does not understand, nor care about why this gap exists, it merely perceives a break in the routine.

Given this, if you want to implement a business change, understand and plan for it to take at least three to four months of regular practice.