From the President – Greg Adamson
A Five-Step Formula to Manage Change
It’s always nice to be home for the holidays, especially if you’ve been traveling. I’ve recently returned from two conferences in about a month, so I know a little bit about that.
As the conference planners certainly expected, I’m back from both with renewed energy, exciting ideas and more than a bit of vision. Allow me to share some of that with you.
In October I attended the LTEN Learning Executive Forum, a think tank of sorts where senior life sciences training leaders came together to share connect and motivate one another. Then, in November, I followed that up by attending DevLearn, a massive annual event focused around learning technologies.
The Learning Executive Forum tends to take a high-level, strategic perspective on things, while tactical and hands-on are key factors at DevLearn. Despite these different vantage points, both events this year spent a lot of time considering where our professional worlds are now, and where we’re going. And there was more than a little discussion about new training tools, like artificial intelligence and ChatGPT.
Inevitably those discussions come to the opportunities and challenges of these Next Big Things (whatever they are). Whether we’re talking about an implementation, a launch or anything else, it all comes down to making it manageable.
The holidays are the perfect time for sharing with your friends, so I’m going to tell you my secret (not really) formula for times of change. It’s easy to be overwhelmed if you let yourself be, but it’s also easy to adapt a simple approach to your situation and make things less intimidating.
- First, become aware. You hear about a new solution that can fit your needs, like ChatGPT, for example. You can see the potential value, even if it makes you a little anxious.
- Second, face your fears. The implementation is intimidating, you feel behind where your peers may be and the idea of catching up seems overwhelming. It’s not; get out of your own way.
- Third, attack! Ask yourself what you need to do to catch up and start catching up. If you know how to train, you know how to learn. Be the best student you’ve ever had, and you’ll get to comfort more quickly than you thought.
- Fourth, meet mastery. You know learning is like a ball rolling downhill … it gains momentum as it goes. Once you feel better about what you’re learning and why, the road to mastery becomes easier. Your motivation helps overcome whatever potholes you find.
- Fifth and finally, normalize it. The knowledge you need is in your head now; it becomes real learning when you implement it. Now that you know what you know, ask yourself, “How can I use this?” What’s the next step in this process? Sometimes you’ve known this all along … here’s where it all starts to come together.
Change is like storms — a frequent occurrence in our business lives. Sometimes it seems like they approach nonstop.
But it’s how we approach the storms that matter the most. For example, let’s look at how buffalo and cows approach storms differently.
When a storm is approaching, buffalo will turn toward the storm as a herd and either walk or run directly into the storm. They want to get through the storm faster, so they take it head on. Cows take a different approach. They turn their back to the storm and try to out walk the storm. That approach never works. They end up staying in the storm longer.
My recommendation is that we face challenges like artificial intelligence head on and walk straight into the storm (like buffalo). We’ll come out better prepared to face our new world of learning.
Whatever path you’re on now, I hope you take some time this December to relax. Enjoy your colleagues, spend time with friends, share happy holidays with your family. We have 2024 waiting for us in the wings, and it’s going to bring everyone new opportunities and challenges. We just need to be rested, ready and eager to get started.
Until then …
Greg Adamson is president of the LTEN Board of Directors and executive director, sales training, for Olympus Americas. You can reach out to Greg via email at greg.adamson@olympus.com or through www.linkedin.com/in/greg-adamson-9b85ba7/.
