28 September 2024

Pain or Joy: Change Management 101...

 Habits are hard to change.  It takes discipline and continuous perseverance.


When was the last time you changed something that increased your revenue?  Your health.  Or your safety and security.


Change and managing change whether in the corporate ranks of your Fortune 500 Global Enterprise or back in your own personal life at home is a true challenge.


Before you even thought about what you needed to change in your business or your own life, you probably have encountered one of two experiences:

    • Pain
    • Joy

Which one of these two experiences have you recently encountered?


You see, our human behavior is quite predictable and it is usually one of these two motivators in life that will change your behavior.


Educating yourself and others you care about requires that you sometimes utilize one of these motivators in order to initiate new change.  Let’s begin with “Pain”.


These realities are exactly what the evil in our world today continues to pray on.  Those individuals who are unable or unwilling to change, and to manage change in their lives.


“It is really very simple. In the foreseeable future, we will not function as a global society without the Net and the immense digital resources and information assets of our society. The addiction is established—commerce, government, education, and our neighbors offer no option other than to require that we rely upon digital information in making decisions. But we will not function successfully if the war for control of those assets is lost. The battlefield, however, is the one on which trust is to be gained or lost—trust in the information we use, trust in the infrastructures that support us, and trust in the decisions we make in a digital world.”  Page 19 - Achieving Digital Trust | The New Rules For Business At The Speed Of Light  - Author Jeffrey Ritter


In your own digital life, these habits may be as simple as using the same password on multiple accounts that each of us rely on, each day or each week of our lives.  You know who you are.


As the continued use of “Ransomware” remains so pervasive across the globe and is utilized by so many criminal gangs and nation states, each one of us must consider our personal and business habits.


At home and at work.


It is now time to change.  It is time to change your digital habits so you may avoid the pain and continue to have even more joy in your life.


Take action.


Start a new habit now of changing the weak password on your bank accounts.  Make it 20 characters, and make it random.  Then set a reminder to change it on January 1, April 1, July 1, and October 1 of each year.


“Microsoft warns that ransomware threat actor Storm-0501 has recently switched tactics and now targets hybrid cloud environments, expanding its strategy to compromise all victim assets.


The threat actor first emerged in 2021 as a ransomware affiliate for the Sabbath ransomware operation. Later they started to deploy file-encrypting malware from Hive, BlackCat, LockBit, and Hunters International gangs. Recently, they have been observed to deploy the Embargo ransomware.


Storm-0501's recent attacks targeted hospitals, government, manufacturing, and transportation organizations, and law enforcement agencies in the United States.” BleepingComputer


After you have successfully accomplished this simple task in your business and in your own personal life, remember:


The “Pain” of doing this simple “Change Management” step in your life, will help bring you continued “Joy” for so many years to come…:)


Godspeed!

21 September 2024

RENS: Growing Your Enterprise...

 There he was, in the early morning light, prancing along outside the fence line just seventy-five feet away.

The young “Buck Deer” with his adolescent antlers stopped and glanced over at the house, just to acknowledge that he saw us sitting on the deck.

As Fall arrives and kids are back in school, it seems as if the pace of work and the demands on peoples time starts to take its toll. Be aware.

Years ago, as some wise people developed the systems and programs around the acronym RENS, they knew from years of experience on the front lines of true battle why it was so vital to success:

  • Recruiting
  • Education
  • Networking
  • Sharing Information

This is the high level context for what your daily activities shall be focused on each day, of each week of each month this year.

"How might you design your program, your systems, your time allocations towards these four key components of your enterprise?"

The original designers knew that each organization is unique and therefore, provided an acronym to keep you on track. Easy to remember, harder to implement effectively on a consistent basis.

If you advertise as one example, for a particular event and you ask people to RSVP, how do you respond after they fill out your form, full of personal contact details?

If they actually attend the event and take the time to see and hear all about your X or Y, how do you respond after they leave and think about what they heard and experienced at your event?

Do you follow-up or do nothing?

At a recent weekly event the guest speaker and very wise man broke down the Recruiting part of RENS to further to three simple steps:

  • Belong
  • Believe
  • Behave

First, if you haven’t created an event where people immediately feel like they belong there, that you too believe in many of the same things they do, you will have a rough time ever getting to the last “B”.

How might you get other people to behave in a certain way?

The tough part about RENS is, that if you are not executing 100% on the effectiveness of your “Recruiting”, how will you ever get the opportunity to Educate, Network and then Share truly vital Information?

Perhaps even more difficult, how will you ever get good people to join your "Just Cause"?

As the “Young Buck” glanced back at us one more time as he went around the tall Spruce tree, we smiled and waved…