Everyone wants change, as long as does not change them

Everyone talks about change, being out of the comfort zone, yet most seek places, careers or lifestyles that help them feeling safe. Yesterday I attended a networking event, where one of the most discussed topics was the need for Europe to change. Change its culture, its economic processes, its support to NGOs and startups, and many other things.

The speakers were from large multinationals, successful implemented startups, and consultancies. Each one of the speakers and guests acknowledge the need for change. They wanted to embrace change.

The funny part came during the latest part of the event, where we had dinner while rotating tables and talking with different people and experts. It was astonishing for me to see that the previous part of the event was forgotten! Everyone talked about change and accepts that we need to change, as long as it is not about their career, business or perspective.

A quick example [note: for the purpose of being respectful I will use a fake identity] – James has been trying to grow his startup for the past 3 years. It’s an online application that can be used by anyone in the world to facilitate entry tickets for events (similar to Eventbrite). For the simple comparison Eventbrite sold 70 million tickets in 6 years while James’ startup sold 10,000 tickets in 3 years.

We talked for about 30 minutes on the challenges of the events management industry, the different between his startup and Eventbrite. I must have challenged and given about 10 different ideas or perspectives on how we could change his business model, reduce costs, re-design the objective of the company, or even drop it and start again. Not a single idea was close to be accepted.

I thought it was just me, but then another participant [let's assume the person's name is Penelope] joined our conversation for about 15 more minutes and also suggested different approaches to James, with no effect whatsoever.

I gave up. Left the conversation as Penelope did. I engaged into a conversation with Penelope about the need for change and we ended up talking about our startup experience. I was talking about the fun paradox of having a very high visitor to lead ratio and a low lead to customer ration and was not understanding why. She gave me very interesting suggestions and today already researching on them.

As normally I also asked her about her startup experience, where she was facing some serious problems with the performance of her team. Luckily, I thought, one of my expertise areas is team performance. When I thought it would be easy to challenge her, the same reaction as the Jimmy. All the ideas I was giving were like bullets to her. She became upset with the fact that she didn’t think of doing simple things such as team building, connecting the team to the higher purpose of the startup, having weekly evaluations (how hard can that be?) and other small tips.

Decided to end the conversation in the best and nicest way. Left home and honestly the question in my mind was: Is it possible that everyone wants change, but nobody is willing to accept it if it directly affects them?

My take on this? If someone is not willing to be challenged, even if just to consider the different perspective, then they should not have the authority to share their own perspectives and challenge someone else.