Originally published in HRHorizons for the National Association of College and University Business Officers (NACUBO), Helping Employees Embrace Change, outlines the key elements that cause fear and confusion in team members when confronted with significant change, and how that individual frustration directly impacts success of organizational change initiatives. Howard Teibel offers a framework for positive change, offering the techniques your organization can impliement to turn natural confusion into a positive learning and growth opportunity.

This week on the Navigating Change Podcast, join Howard Teibel and Pete Wright for a discussion on the change framework introduced in the article, and the importance of building a positive change environment.

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Helping Employees Embrace Change

Howard Teibel Halfway through my most recent talk at a higher education conference, I told the attendees that I wanted the first three rows to move to the back of the room and the last three rows to move to the front. After a brief pause of bewilderment and disbelief, attendees started gathering their belongings to move. That’s when I announced: “You don’t have to move. This is only a test.” The imaginary pitch forks aimed at me transformed into a collective sigh of relief.

For most of us, something routine like picking a seat at a conference entails a simple calculation: Sit in the back if you want to sneak out or text without being seen; sit in the front if you want to be actively involved in the discussion; or sit in the middle if you want the benefit of both those options. Whenever you ask someone to get out of their comfort zone—such as moving to a different seat—the reaction is often as predictable as it is humorous: Are you kidding? Why? I’m not moving.

Those same responses tend to surface whenever a system implementation is announced. Consider also the common reaction when word comes down that a restructuring will take within your division or perhaps organization wide. In both cases, internal emotional chaos ensues.

Is it possible to help ourselves and others relate to big changes in a way that empowers a positive reaction, even when the change appears on the surface to be negative? How can we learn to shift our mental framework from thinking about the bad things that might happen to envisioning the opportunities we can create for ourselves and others?

Three Common Reactions to Change

First, consider three different reactions to change.

1. Cool ambivalence. Sheila has been working for her college for the past 18 years. Coming to work one morning she discovers an e-mail from her associate dean describing a plan to restructure the department, along with some changes in management. A consultant would be helping with the process. The rumors start buzzing, as staff members attempt to interpret the hidden meaning behind the announcement. Most of Sheila’s coworkers are 10 to 20 years younger and have little experience with change in the workplace. Sheila, on the other hand, recognizes this as something she has been through many times before. Over lunch she proceeds to share her perspective with coworkers to alleviate their fears about how wide-sweeping the change will likely be and suggests they not worry about much actually changing. This is simply someone’s latest “great idea” that they will need to weather.

2. Irrational anxiety. Bob, an IT manager, is responsible for the human resource and financial systems used across the campus. He has been in this role for two years, having worked his way up the organizational chart during the past 10 years. During a staff meeting with the head of the department, Bob learns that the university is looking for a new strategy to replace the constant upgrades and patches needed to keep these systems current. A task force has been assembled focused on exploring ways to significantly improve efficiency in IT, specifically in the areas Bob supports. Upon hearing this news, his first thoughts are that his own job is in jeopardy. He proceeds to e-mail every colleague in the department detailing how bad this change will be. Within a week, half of the staff members in his department think they are in danger of losing their jobs. Two months later Bob is still talking about how bad the change will be, and his department remains in a state of high anxiety.

3. Positive purpose. Joan joined the human resources department three years ago and enthusiastically wants to make a difference in the university’s hiring practices and processes, bringing to bear her unique perspective and success from her previous institution. Within six months Joan discovers how difficult it is to integrate new practices among her coworkers. Despite the skepticism she has encountered—including from her boss—Joan is determined not to give up trying to initiate positive changes. Every time someone tells her why something can’t be done, Joan listens and then shares her vision for a different way to consider the issue.

Sheila, Bob, and Joan reveal distinct reactions people can have when facing change. Sheila’s tenure at the college makes her resilient, but also ambivalent and unenthusiastic. Bob is waiting for the next shoe to drop—and in the meantime is stirring up anxiety among his coworkers. Joan not only ignores the negativity of others, but continues to offer ideas for making positive changes for her department and the institution.

What causes people to have such varied reactions in the face of change? Different life experiences, a perceived lack of options or fear of loss, and poor self-esteem or low confidence are among the many factors that may contribute to how an individual reacts to something new or different. How can we improve our personal reactions to an anticipated change and help others do the same? Often, the problem is not change itself but the ambiguity that change creates. Marilyn Ferguson, author of The Aquarian Conspiracy, may have characterized it best when she said:

“It’s not so much that we’re afraid of change or so in love with the old ways, but it’s that place in between that we fear… It’s like being between trapezes. It’s Linus when his blanket is in the dryer. There’s nothing to hold on to.”

Change forces us not only to recognize that we can’t rest in our comfort zone, but also to confront the fact that we might not be able to look forward sufficiently to see where we will land. Any change requires venturing into that middle place and looking for some hint of light at the end of the tunnel.

Taking the Positive Approach

“With a new governor, a new board of trustees and the reality that we are now a tuition-dependent institution, our organization needed help embracing change. I was looking for a way to help our managers and staff understand that personal responsibility for navigating change in our professional lives is a key component of a high-performing team,” says Bob Shea, vice president for business affairs at the Community College of Rhode Island (CCRI).

This need led Shea to offer a workshop to his division focused on learning to better accept and embrace change. In reflecting on the workshop, Shea noted that the people who benefited most from the workshop were those who brought a certain perspective to the experience. “The common thread among those who found it most useful were those having an open mind and some level of optimism for the future.”

One CCRI staff member who participated in the workshop recognized that she needed to adjust how she viewed work challenges. Terrie-Lynn Bell, media specialist in the IT department, had felt overwhelmed by the learning curve of her work and didn’t think she knew enough to do her job well. She was concerned she wouldn’t be able to resolve certain issues on her own, especially with regard to helping faculty with technical issues in the classroom.

Among the insights Bell took away from the workshop were the need to bring a positive attitude to each new challenge and to surround herself with others who also have a positive outlook. Getting on the negative bandwagon only spreads those negative vibes to others, and that can impact your own progress and success, observes Bell, who interacts frequently with students and faculty in her job. “If you struggle, they struggle. If you’re comfortable, they’re comfortable. If you laugh, they laugh.”

Four Rooms, Four Views

While most of us are hard-wired to seek what is within our comfort zone (e.g., a particular seat in a room), and while some of us are able to let the ambiguity of something new roll off our shoulders, there is a common cycle we all go through in times of real change. During the workshops at CCRI, attendees were introduced to the four-room model of change developed by Swedish psychologist Claes Janssen, which allowed them to identify where they were within the institution’s change cycle and became a useful mechanism for beginning to feel a greater sense of control for taking positive action.

The four rooms of Janssen’s model are contentment, denial, confusion, and renewal. The four-room model can be applied to any type of change—a reorganization, a potential layoff, or watching your child head off to college. Let’s use the implementation of a new hiring system to consider this model.

Contentment room. Within the workplace, a very familiar example of traveling through the four rooms is evident when an institution rolls out a new technology campuswide. Before the current system is shut down and the new system is up and running, most of us are in a place of contentment. Logging in, processing a transaction, and logging out is second nature—something we could almost do in our sleep.

Denial room. Then on a Monday morning you go to process a new transaction and nothing is the same. Yes, you received training on the new tool, but let’s be honest: Does anyone really pay attention until they have to do something for real? By the time you’ve reminded yourself how to log in to the new system, you could have processed the entire transaction and gone to lunch using the old system. It doesn’t take long for a sense of frustration, anger, and desire for the old system to return. In the denial room, you longingly look back and want to forget the reality of the change.

Confusion room. Most of us do need time to vent our frustrations, blame management, or get over our initial discomfort. Yet, at some point we must move on and “get with the program.” The sooner we recognize that no one is listening to our complaints and the new system is here to stay, the more quickly we can enter this third room. At this point we’re not completely ready to let go of the past, but we start to make greater efforts to get through the change. (This is also that middle place described by Ferguson, where we can’t bring back the past, but we don’t yet see how we’re going to end up in a better place.) Confusion itself is often misunderstood. This is an emotional state that actually signals the beginning of learning and the foundation for accepting something new. The next time someone shares with you how confused they are, respond “that’s fantastic.” You may get some odd stares, but what we’re really saying when we’re confused is that we’re trying to learn how to do something. We’re using our energy to look forward versus looking back. Getting to this room is a key milestone in navigating change.

Renewal room. As the confusion starts to wane and we develop a greater comfort and confidence with the new system, we find ourselves admitting that maybe the new way is better than the old way. This is when we enter the fourth room, and with it comes a sense of relief and satisfaction for having successfully tackled the change. In some cases, renewal may not last long before the cycle begins again—especially when it comes to perpetual technology upgrades.

Dealing With Big Amorphous Change

What happens when an anticipated change becomes your worst fear? For many in the workplace, that fear is losing one’s job. Immediately after the financial crisis of 2008, Brown University faced a 25 percent reduction in its endowment. Senior leadership took this as an opportunity to look for ways to streamline work, including not filling vacancies, providing for early retirement, and weighing potential layoffs. Brown leadership recognized this would be a challenging time for its people.

With a goal of helping the larger organization deal with the need to significantly reduce costs and potentially reduce head count, Karen Davis, Brown’s vice president for human resources, seized the opportunity to provide leadership for those who needed help adjusting to the ambiguity of what the future held. “In the early days of the financial crisis, we knew that it was likely going to have a significant impact on our bottom line as well as on jobs. However, we weren’t sure of the size of the impact, nor could we predict what our comprehensive response strategy would be,” says Davis.

What Brown’s leaders did know was that the university was in for a period of dramatic change—something that typically does not come easy in the higher education environment. That convinced Davis of the need to help prepare the university community for change. “Our hope was to channel the collective worry into something more positive for individuals as well as for our community overall.”

Davis and her team focused on helping the larger organization deal with facts in a way that empowered them to take action rather than cause additional anxiety. The university sponsored a series of change-management workshop designed in conjunction with Brown’s Center for Learning and Professional Development, led by Judy Nabb. The workshop provided a forum for employees to articulate fears and concerns (personal as well as work-related) and to share them with colleagues. The workshops also provided an opportunity to learn new strategies for dealing with uncertainty, for pushing through change, and for taking control of one’s work life. Over the course of eight months, more than 260 Brown employees took advantage of the workshop experience.

According to Davis, the impact was positive and dramatic. Many employees benefited immediately from simply having a safe forum in which to express concerns about their jobs; the effect of the downturn on their families, friends, and neighbors; and even about Brown’s future. The relief many workshop participants felt after these conversations allowed them to focus on what they could do to prepare for the future, both personally and professionally, notes Davis. Ultimately, this led to a better understanding of university concerns and greater commitment to helping address the institution’s financial challenges rather than resisting the changes required to tackle them head-on.

As Michelle Venditelli, one Brown workshop attendee, stated: “There was a great sense of unease during that time, and I found the focus on change in this workshop experience very helpful. It gave me great tips for how to deal with stress on a personal level, but also helped me be better equipped as a manager to deal with the stress that my staff were feeling.”

Much of that spirit carries on today as the university community continues to deal with the fallout from the financial crisis and several significant leadership changes, new programmatic priorities, and external political threats, says Davis.

Unlearning and Relearning

Futurist and author Alvin Toffler once stated that the illiterate of the 21st century won’t be those who can’t read and write, but those who can’t learn, unlearn, and relearn. That remains a prophetic statement for the period of accelerating change facing many higher education institutions today. Unlearning is about allowing ourselves to go through the full cycle of change—from contentment to renewal. Personal power resides with our ability to recognize what is in front of us and to be willing to push through our own denial and confusion to reach that light at the end.

So, the next time you go to a workshop, consider changing your seat after the break. You might find a small power in shaking up your vantage point and in not waiting for someone else to tell you to move.

Zander serves as the conductor of The Boston Philharmonic Orchestra, and is of renown as a guest conductor with orchestras around the world. He’s a Grammy-winning recording artist with the Boston orchestra and takes as much a part in creating the music as he does in teaching his community—and the world—how music works.

Zander was, by far, the most engaging presenter I have ever seen. When I say that he spoke to us as if we were children, I mean that with no degree of sarcasm. In fact, his first demonstration was to illustrate exactly how children learn music. He used the child’s model of understanding rhythm, structure, and the essential building blocks that lead to this concept he calls flow. Music, he says, and the connection to music, has to be in the body.

As it turns out, taking us back to this more childlike frame was a brilliant way to demonstrate what we need to be doing with our lives and our leadership, and to ask this essential question of ourselves: Are we connected with what we are doing in our lives right now?

Zander then introduced us to John. John was an attendee, just like I was, sitting a little further down toward the front of the hall, and it was John’s birthday. Zander proceeded to stand John on a chair in front of the crowded hall and conduct us in a chorus of “Happy Birthday” to celebrate.

We were terrible. Zander told us so.

He made us take it again. He pushed us, driving us to give our very best to John, saying that this birthday was to be the very best day of John’s year, and that we were to commit to giving John that level of our attention and focus. And John, Zander prodded, was to drink in every ounce, to let it wash over him and be proud of the feeling.

Zander was a lunatic of the highest fashion. And yet, a surprise to many of us, he managed to bring out that commitment and we delivered one of the best damned renditions of “Happy Birthday” I’ve ever heard 4,000 executives muster.

A key lesson of Ben Zander for me is this: Our role as a leader is to demonstrate our commitment to people being as big and as great as they can be. His leadership asks not for following, rather for asking people to be actively engaged and connected in what they are doing. And his own commitment to that same connection inspires what he calls “Shining Eyes”—the physical manifestation of that connection. As a leader, Zander says it’s our job to bring that same shine to all our teams.

Zander’s leadership is not about celebrating his own wisdom and experience as a globally recognized conductor. It’s about what he is able to bring out in others. But developing this sort of relationship comes with great risks, some more manufactured than others. Zander cautions that our modern concepts of performance measurement often come at the expense of true leadership.

Measurement is, at it’s worst, about judgement. It’s about setting a bar above which is success and prosperity, and below which all else is failure. According to Zander, if you want people to succeed, you can’t be kicking off your team relationships from a position of judgement.

If transformational relationships can lead to success, fear of being managed operates in the face of that potential for success. Where Zander succeeds is in eliminating judgement, which in turn eliminates fear, and returns to productivity. Measurement maturity is leading us to be more inclusive about what we’re managing — including more ethereal concepts like happiness—in creating a more well-rounded picture of performance.

Measurement is a collaboration. Zander says he starts off every student-professor meeting by giving his students A’s all around. He presumes success from the outset, and works with his students so that they define why they are going to be successful. If they don’t deliver what they promised up front, they will know exactly why they are going to fail.

This practical, holistic approach to building sound measures hits home for me. It sheds the stigma of the one-size-fits-all methodologies and lets individuals shine as they need to shine, and departments and teams and organizations, too.

He informed us that he was about to put an image up on the screen before us. In that image would be a series of shapes. “I want you to tell me how many shapes you see,” he said, and then an image appeared.

On the screen were shapes of all sizes and geometry — triangles embedded inside of triangles, circles in circles, and so on. After thirty seconds, the image disappeared and he asked us, “how many shapes did you see?” One person shouted, “Ten!” A few more, “a hundred!” Still more voices shouted, “a thousand!”

“Good,” he said. “Now, how many children were on the bus?”

I didn’t know there was a bus in the image I had seen, let alone how many children were on it. The rest of the audience was equally confused.

“What time was on the clock?” he asked. The image came back on the screen. Right there, plain as day, a clock, a bus full of kids, a full story of images beyond the shapes Ben-Shahar had initially asked us to count.

That 4,000 of us in the audience were all but clueless to the story that unfolded in the image on the screen. The experience built the foundation for Ben-Shahar’s key point: the questions you ask provide the foundation of your focus, and your focus is what you end up doing. In this example, he’d asked us to focus on the shapes on the screen. We did so, at the exclusion of other key data in the images.

As it turns out, we are naturally gifted at listening to and following instruction. Our intellectual gift puts a great deal of responsibility on the shoulders of our leaders in discovering and determining the right questions to ask of our organizations. If we don’t ask the right questions, we’re in danger of answering them with irrelevance.

It is Ben-Shahar’s position that we as leaders spend far too much time focusing on what is not working in our organizations, than on what is working. In that light, he counsels leaders to develop what he calls an “also/and” reference frame. It is this frame that allows us to evaluate and grow what is working without ignoring what needs work, but not at the exclusion of it. After all, he says, with every question we ask we’re excluding a whole range of other potentially critical questions, and relevant sets of data.

For example, in the higher ed context, we might be wary of asking “why is our tenure system broken?” Instead, pose the issue, “our Tenure system fosters academic and research excellence and it puts a financial strain on academic departments; it’s time for a discussion on maintaining strength and relevance of the program in light of financial realities.” In this way, we frame a complex discussion in a way that celebrates what is working and highlights issues we must address and resolve collaboratively.

This is a particularly profound learning for me. The lesson here is about more than just learning to ask the right questions. After all, we’ve been taught since childhood that there are no right or wrong questions. But our job as leaders is to be aware that the question you ask will directly guide the outcome.

“Our experience in the world is completely influenced by where we place our attention,” Ben-Shahar says. Our job as leaders is to ask the right questions which foster and grow awareness, and focus on growing what is working, rather than what is not. Where you put your attention as a leader, the organization will follow.

It could be easy to write off Ben-Shahar’s work as a gimmick. I assure you, based on my experience, it is no gimmick. Nor is this a simple framework to use when you’d rather avoid having a difficult conversation. In fact, this new level of focus and awareness opens the door for much more complex, challenging, difficult, and rewarding conversations than we’ve ever had before.

His thesis is pretty simple: Leadership is about taking risk.

Simple, indeed. According to Gladwell, there are two types of risk that good leaders will have to cross at some point or another in their leadership careers: operational risk, and social risk.

• Operational risk asks how willing you are as a leader to bet big. Do you have the guts to risk the company on a path you believe is right?
• Social risk asks how willing you are to give up popularity in the face of big, potentially unpopular decisions.

Gladwell’s research over the years has led him to some interesting observations. As it turns out, many in positions of leadership take massive operational risks, betting the company on some new product or another, all the while working hard to ensure they remain socially accepted and popular.

But the best leaders, says Gladwell, the leaders that make the biggest and most profound impact, make decisions in precisely the opposite fashion. Instead of being willing to bet the farm on hair-brain ideas that follow the accepted, popular path, the best leaders are even-headed and operationally risk averse. And yet, they are willing to risk their social capital to do what they believe is right. The best leaders inspire through reason, and when push comes to shove, they don’t care what the rest of the world thinks about them.

Gladwell is part of a fascinating caste of journalists at work today. He is a keen observer of the human business condition, and the elements of communication that pique his interest for investigation tend toward those that are only completely obvious in hindsight.

Insight, Gladwell said, might be the greatest difficulty for great leaders. It takes great insight, after all for leaders to find strength and motivation to take risks and accept social rejection. In the end, the calculus is fairly simple: You have to love what you do, Gladwell says. If you truly love what you do, you will be willing to take the right sorts of risk and work that much harder.

But it’s his demeanor that first struck me. I found myself sitting in the audience noting his casual dress, the way his arms swing haphazardly before he crosses them across his chest, his direct yet casual banter; Bill George is an everyman. As much as we love to ascribe an air of pomp and circumstance to those whose work we admire, there is as much a tribute to be shared when those expectations are broken. In the case of Bill George, I find myself admiring him for his leadership lessons, and for his ability to maintain his pragmatic and approachable sensibility while delivering explosive business results.

This sensibility is absolutely apparent in his take on leadership.

George has three operating questions that guide his model for leadership.

1. What is the purpose of my leadership? In his book True North, George provides an exercise in which the reader is to write an essay to herself describing the long-term purpose of her leadership. The first step in defining great leadership is understanding the near-term purpose of it. However, leadership objectives can’t be fairly assessed without asking the next question. …
2. How can I stay the course with my values and purpose? George asserts that daily efforts in leadership are likely more connected than we think to the rest of our lives. His follow-up question is appropriately leading: In what ways does the purpose of your leadership relate to the rest of your life? Is it integral to it or separate from it?
3. How can I develop my leadership? George cites a 2009 Harvard study which revealed that 69% of respondents believe there is a leadership crisis in the U.S., exacerbated by widespread loss of trust in politicians, media, finance, and business leaders. In recovering trust, George says leaders must recover their compassion, contemplation, and sense of purpose.

It’s these three simple questions, combined with George’s profound experience and straight-forward approach to issues so many professionals make too complex, that cement his credibility. He reminds us to align people around mission and values before projects and processes, empower people to stand up and lead, and to do so in a collaborative spirit. I love the simplicity of this message.

So much of George’s presentation clearly comes from a deeply personal place. As he prepared his close, his talk turned particularly sober. “A key part of leadership development,” he said, “is to develop your emotional intelligence.” Practical skills and technical training will give you the tools you need to do a job. But it’s emotional intelligence that allows you to work with others cooperatively, collaboratively, and to create great programs.

Finally, George concluded with a challenge. He said that on our deathbed, we’re going to ask ourselves what we did to make a difference in the world around us by way of our leadership. “If you can work out what that is now,” he challenged the room, “then do it now.”

I attended this conference for my own personal and professional development. Most conferences I attend, I’m interacting with clients and prospective customers in the higher ed and health care space. I thought this might be a good opportunity to see what’s going on in the wider business community.

As it turns out, there was a more important reason for me to attend this particular event: so many of the concepts that came together over these two days are part of a conversation that is largely not occurring in the higher ed and health care space right now. Creative leadership from the top, collaboration and teamwork, understanding our core customer; each of these takes a backseat to political struggles and strategic planning initiatives that risk looking backward far more than looking ahead.

The World Business Forum in so many ways was a port in the storm for me, a sign that while our intentions are good, we have so much more work to do together to ensure that our institutions are are ready to transform, to tackle the most difficult issues successfully, and to serve our most important core customers: the leaders of the future.

In the month that has passed since the event, I’ve had the chance to stop and reflect on key concepts and learnings. As I begin to integrate these lessons into my own work, I’d like to share a few of the stories of these leaders with you. Through this series of posts here on the blog, I will walk through the key lessons of eleven of the keynote presenters from the WBF stage including:

In many cases, I’ve read their books. For some, I’m a regular reader of their writing online. For few, I’ve never had the opportunity to cross paths with the ideas they shared with us over those two days. But for each of them, I can now say they have rightfully earned their position as influential leader, and that they have taken the time to share their ideas on transformational leadership with our forum is a gift to us all.

It is my hope that this series of posts provides a brief framework for discussion, and that the notes I share here will provide you a launchpad for leadership through change in your own organizations.

Kanter has an interesting take on the importance of zooming in, and zooming out, for leaders in strategic roles. It’s a riff off of her “Kanter’s Law,” everything can look like a failure in the middle, recommending leaders learn to be agile leaders. What I find worth noting is that it’s logic that challenges our assumptions of the characteristics that make up the best leaders. We hear too often that the best leaders are big picture people, people who are able to define direction and lead others to grand change. Kanter’s assertion is that mixing the big picture with the muscle of zooming in to understand detail, not just principle, allows leaders to “see the specific destination, not just what’s around it.”

The interview below is just 10 minutes and is worth consideration this morning.

The video below is a company-produced PR piece, so we have to take it with a grain of salt, to be sure. No matter what the intention of the media team, we simply can’t underscore the raw power of this sort of upside-down perspective change. As you watch the short video below, note the reactions of the “buddy” team coaching the executives; as much awe as the CEO has for the consultants, as much pride as the marketing chief felt when she sold her first phone package, giving the sales team a chance to “coach up” is one of the most powerful team-building exercises you can offer a close-knit staff.

It’s just a few minutes — I hope it puts as big a smile on your face as it did mine!

Jeanne Ross and Peter Weill for the WSJ:

In a digital economy, IT is the foundation for doing business. This is easy to see at born-digital companies like Amazon.com and Google. But companies of all types are discovering that how they manage IT is crucial to their competitiveness. It determines whether the company’s dealings with customers and suppliers are efficient, scalable and timely; whether employees have the information they need to do their jobs; and whether employees throughout the company see technology as a tool to move forward, or an anchor that keeps them running in place.

To provide focus, Ross and Weill offer four excellent questions executives and strategic planners should be asking of their IT pros and investments.

1. Are we using technology to transform our business, or are we just adding bells and whistles to existing processes?
2. Are you ignoring important business differences as you standardize processes across the company?
3. Who is making sure the company’s digital strategy is being implemented?
4. Is electronic data empowering your people or controlling them?

The summary and case in the discussion of each question is spot on and worth digesting this morning as you evaluate the technology at work in your change initiatives.

Seth Godin, from part 2 in a two-part series on the new normal at work (read part 1):

Right before your eyes, a fundamentally different economy, with different players and different ways to add value is being built. What used to be an essential asset (for a person or for a company) is worth far less, while new attributes are both scarce and valuable.

Are there dislocations? There’s no doubt about it. Pain and uncertainty and risk, for sure.

The opportunity, though, is the biggest of our generation (or the last one, for that matter). The opportunity is there for anyone (with or without a job) smart enough to take it–to develop a best in class skill, to tell a story, to spread the word, to be in demand, to satisfy real needs, to run from the mediocre middle and to change everything.

I talk to finance and administration professionals all the time about this concept of the new normal. The act of working to restore where we were, to rebuild the systems and processes that were in place before the tectonic economic shift of our generation, is a distraction. Seth’s posts this week make for a well-crafted and ultimately optimistic discussion on the nature of the change in work and work systems, and the opportunity we can all take not to rebuild the old, but to build something new, something different, something even better than before.