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I hate change. Or rather I hate change unless it's me doing the changing. I barely get comfortable with the status quo when someone wants to change something.
Nature vs Nurture
Maybe that's the way I was brought up. My family were Jewish refugees. All they cared about was putting down roots in their adopted county and assimilating. That's why I'm called Ben Black and not Ben Schwarzschild.
My parents still live in the house I was born in. My wife's not like that. Her dad was a Dow international assignee. She's been brought up moving country, school and friends every few years. She's always changing something - her current project is trying to exchange me for something different. That's painful on a number of levels!
It's the same in business. Change is the natural order of things but I find it stressful.
Change is...
Diversity people excel at change. They rip everything up; throw it in the air; and then sit back and see which bits stick. At My Family Care, it seems like everyone apart from me is running around manically innovating. We've moved offices, launched the Work+Family Space, developed the UK's first online maternity coaching programme, developed our Just for Fathers materials and God knows how many projects we have in the pipeline for early next year.
Actually I do know, but counting pains me. STOP! Please. Let's just take a few months off.
The problem is change is good. It's often called progress.
Progress
We launched Good Care Guide earlier this year. It's best understood as a Trip Advisor for the care industry. It needed doing - the care market, eldercare more so than childcare, is old fashioned and suspicious. The site is great but it's also caused massive controversy and debate in the ranks of care home owners.
The site's launch caused one of the longest and most abusive LinkedIn debates of the year. Some people just don't get it. This is a change that needs to happen and will happen irrespective of how many teeth are gnashed.
So there you have it. I love change, as long as it's me that starts it.
Ben Black
