Whether it’s a business, a school, or a youth ministry or even a blog there is both fun and danger in change. Some would say that half of the fun of change is the danger.
Good Catalyst
Almost all of the change I deal with is neccesitated by the existing way not meeting expectations and/or goals. Somewhere in a meeting the team will decide that a radical change is needed because the existing “thing” just isn’t going to cut it anymore. It’s always a pure thought. It’s always a change for the better. And it’s always a change with the best of intentions.
The Dark Side of Change
There are some people lost in every change. For some recipients of the change, your customers or students or youth group kids or blog readers, the change becomes an opportunity to check out.
In Romeo, a format change to the youth group meant that several students never came back. It wasn’t a judgment of the quality of the program… in the end, our changes just gave them an excuse to not come back.
At adammclane.com I’ve never recovered all of the RSS subscribers I had when I was on Typepad. I went from 100+ to about 30 and have never gotten back to 100 RSS subscribers.
Just today a blogger I follow announced he was moving from Blogger to WordPress and I decided this was a good time to stop following him. It’s not that I don’t care for him, it’s simply that I don’t care enough about his blog to both unsubscribe to his content and then go to his new site and re-subscribe.
On and on this principle continues. A change is made and we accept a certain fallout percentage.
So here’s the big question: Are those changes worth it?
In hind site I would have rather kept those 70 subscribers to my blog and those 3-4 families in the youth group than embrace what was changed. Sure, in the process of changing I’ve gained new subscribers and now youth group has several fresh faces… but I’m left wondering if we could have had both if the old way was tweaked and not overhauled.
No matter what you lead or have the power to change you have to weigh is the change I’m making for the potential of growing exponentially worth the loss of some people who won’t make the transition?
I can think of many times when the answer to that is a resounding YES. But I can think of a couple where the answer is NO.
So, fellow change-o-holics: Is change worth it or are there times the biggest risk we can take is to stay the same?
Leave a Reply