Change

The line it is drawn, the curse it is cast

The slow one now will later be fast

As the present now will later be past

The order is rapidly fadin’

And the first one now will later be last

For the times, they are a-changin’—Bob Dylan

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While Dylan sang of cultural and societal CHANGE, many a LinkedIn post has tackled CHANGE in the business environment. Gloria Styles, an accomplished colleague of mine, and I know a thing or two about embracing CHANGE in the workplace. So, the next playbook coming off the shelf will be a joint effort between Gloria and me on CHANGE.

When discussing CHANGE in the workplace, a smile immediately appears on my face and my eyes twinkle, my forehead creases, and my somewhat skewed smile widens. Having been a business and legal professional in private practice, industrial and aerospace manufacturing, out-of-home marketing, ocean shipping and logistics, and fintech, I have gravitated to opportunities as opposed to industries and inevitably embraced CHANGE. Between CEOs and members of the board, the number of business leaders that I have reported to far exceeds the numbers of year that I’ve enjoyed in the workplace (35+). If you place my “professional” DNA under the microscope, you can identify CHANGE as the foundation of many of the twists and spirals that make up the building blocks of my career.

The fabric of Gloria’s life and career also contain significant threads of CHANGE that have come to define her professional success.

Gloria’s parents escaped Communist Hungary in May of 1978 to start a new life in Canada where she was born 4 weeks later. Her experiences from that point forward included many moves, a new country, new schools, and a continued reinvention of where her life was taking her. Little did she know then that she was setting herself up for a career where no two days are alike and getting comfortable with discomfort was the ticket to the game. After college she taught high school theology and made her way into school administration. Teaching high school juniors and seniors in your twenties must be a humbling experience. From there, she embarked on an 18+ year career in Human Resources. 12 of those years in retail pharmacy and 6+ in fintech. She has lived all over the Northeast and moved to Charlotte, NC 10 years ago to start a new chapter of her life. While she believes CHANGE is in her DNA, the twists and turns of life have put a spotlight on both the ups and downs of navigating CHANGE.

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CHANGE elicits different responses from all of us. As Gloria and I delve deeper into this playbook, PLEASE post and share your thoughts. Your responses will add to the collective wisdom on this topic! So, let’s explore the winds of CHANGE together and see where CHANGE takes us.