Relationships and Change

What happens when you decide to change?

When you follow up with your plans for personal growth and change, there’s bound to be a consequent change in your closest relationships. The other side to your changes/growth is it may be threatening to a friend who is uncomfortable with change or just felling a little insecure. You may find yourself facing unspoken messages that say, "Change back! Don’t grow because I don't want you to!"

If this happens, you will face an odd decision what to do. You may choose to return to your old self and not change.

If you reach an impasse and the situation gets too rough, you may choose to leave the relationship or you may choose to take the risk of change and work toward helping your partner change. Of course, it won't be helpful to push her or him into change. It has to be seen as something desirable, so painting a visual and verbal picture of the benefits both of you would receive is probably the way to go.

Be patient and persistent, and try to put yourself in the other person's shoes. Demonstrate self-respect and respect for your significant other as well. If real caring and intimacy exist in your relationship, almost any change can be worked out, and will eventually be another reaffirmation of your love and commitment to each other.

Musing - Getting Things Under Control

Do you ever feel like your life has gotten out of control? Some days, it's easy to feel that way and we’ll all feel that way some days.

No matter you set goals, how hard you visualize results and affirm a positive outcomes, every once in a while your going to feel like life’s has one off the rails. Carefully laid plans in tatters. People you relied on, abandon you. A health or family crisis, a financial surprise or an earthquake puts you back to square one.  Suddenly you feel as if you're out of control, and lost at sea.

At times like this, there are a few things it may help you to remember. First of all, no one can control every aspect of his or her life, and adversity comes to all of us, no matter how moral we are, and no matter how good our attitude is. Bad things happen to good people all the time.

Second, it's important to realize that there is one and only one thing in life that is completely within your power to control, and that is your response to what happens to you. When you find yourself overcome with feelings of fear, helplessness, doom and gloom, you can put the brakes on these feelings by gently but firmly choosing to shift the focus of the thoughts that are running through your mind.

Your feelings are a direct result of the thoughts you think, and setting aside some time every morning and evening for positive visualization, affirmation, or guided meditation is a highly effective way of getting these thoughts back under your control again. Try it. You will be surprised at just how well it works.

Forget Users, External Customers is where its at.

Are you a victim of the internal customer, the one that is forever changing their mind chasing the next big thing? You spend months streamlining processes using cross functional teams delivering IT systems that provide the business outcomes you set out to achieve. Another successful project brought in on time and on budget. Yet many of these celebrated project never will fulfil their full potential as they often forget include the external customers (suppliers, paying customers, etc.).

over the years we find ourselves into serious trouble when we focus too much on the end user of the software application being designed. You tend to focus on making it an easy as possible for the internal employees to do what's expected, the internal management team are pleased that their teams are being catered for. Don't you want to make it easy for your external customers to deal with you, streamline the supply chain. all to often the two objectives are in direct conflict.

Creating a self-service mindset within your design processes, regardless if you've adopted enterprise architecture, you can offset many of the process tasks to the most practical. Purchase order progress maintained by suppliers; credit limits, overdue accounts visible to paying customers. If you start with the external view then move inward to where you have greater influence then you will stand a greater chance of delivering 'real' value and lasting significant benefit. Don't rely on your internal users to hold the answers to the best solution. Obviously you need to ensure they are consulted and informed, but the drive needs to be outside in.

That's right, no more internal-only applications. If you are looking at HR expense management, your billing systems, or revamping the inventory management systems, everything impacts your external customers. everyone needs to understand that success must be measured from multiple view points. Be brave an challenge some of the businesses practices you could save huge amounts by removing costs and building relationships with the outside world.