Fast Company The Rules Of Business 55 Essential Ideas To Help Smart People (and Organizations) Perform At Their Best

Chapter 1 Change The 32-year-old company founder was tired as he sat down for a quick drink. He had done six fund-raising presentations in a row in the conference room downstairs, and the venture capitalistsstill smarting from the burst of the Internet bubblehad been skeptical each and every time. That explained his crankiness, and it could have also been the reason why he suddenly attacked the presentation his CEOa 30-year industry veteranhad made earlier in the day. #1 The first rule of business is the same as the first rule of life: Adapt or die. "Right there, on his first slide, he wrote, 'Things change.' How could he say anything that trite?" To his credit, the young hotshot was right. "Things change" is about as basic as a business cliche gets. But to dismiss the point out of hand is to ignore two vital facts: 1. There is a reason that sayings become cliches: They're often true. 2. The greatest cause of death among established companies is their inability to adapt to changing circumstances. Companies have to constantly adapt and change. There is always both a looming threat as well as a massive opportunity in front of them. To ignore either is inevitably fatal. Not surprisingly, then, change is ahugeleadership challenge. Altering the direction of an organization is immensely difficult, and the problem is compounded by the fact that the people you depend on to execute the changeyour employeesmay not understand the reason why they have to do things differently. As a result, just when you need them most, they are likely to fight you at every turn. And even if you convince them to go along, you must figure out how to change your organization effectively and in real time. In other words, you need to prepare for the future without screwing up the present. No wonder change is difficult and why so many managers are unwilling to take on the task until it is too late. The inevitable result? Icons ranging from AT&T to Zenith ("the quality goes in before the name goes on") have been acquired by other companiesor have ceased to exist altogether. Still, even a cursory survey of the best companies of all time reveals that those organizations that survive for the long haul are constantly evolving in a myriad of ways. Two examples will suffice: The nature of GE's corporate portfolio seems to change almost daily, and PepsiCo, which began life selling just colas, gets the majority of its sales and earnings today from its Frito-Lay snack division. But, as the business headlines remind us daily, those companies seem the exception. The wisdom of the leaders and thinkers in this book shows just how difficult change can be. It also reveals the upside: An organization that embraces change and executes it efficiently can evolve and thrive. How change doesn't happen "Picture an egg. Day after day, it sits there. No one pays attention to it. No one notices it. Certainly no one takes a picture of it or puts it on the cover of a celebrity-focused business magazine. Then one day, the shell cracks and out jumps a chicken. "All of a sudden, the major magazines and newspapers jump on the story: 'Stunning Turnaround at Egg!' and 'The Chick Who Led the Breakthrough at Egg!' From the outside, the story always reads like an overnight sensation as if the egg had suddenly and radically altered itself into a chicken. "It's a silly analogybut then our conventional way of looking at change is no less silly. Everyone looks for the 'miraFast Company Staff is the author of 'Fast Company The Rules Of Business 55 Essential Ideas To Help Smart People (and Organizations) Perform At Their Best', published 2005 under ISBN 9780385516310 and ISBN 0385516312.