How do we Cope with Change?

We collect all of our change at the end of the day and put it in a big jar. Every couple of months we take all the change, roll it and deposit it in the bank.

Collect the change, contain the change, sort the change, redeem the change. This is how we deal with change.

Regards.

Milo

This is an excellent question, my answer and thoughts on it will probably be redundant as the OP will probably have changed his mind on the issue and not care what this soul says.

Change is a force, it will overpower any resistance regardless of efforts to the contrary, it is a matter of time. I see Cuba as a good example, the Castros are at deaths door and have finally loosened their grip, while America keeps a tight embargo still. This will change in the next 5-10 years and we will reflect on why it ever held so long.

I rarely text on my phone but my hairdresser texted that she had a slot at 7:00pm on the 18th. If I wanted the slot, send a reply. She is clever and tech savvy, works from 2-10pm. If I do not reply it will hurt --only me--. My kids text, non stop and 5 years ago while visiting home in Ireland you could not engage most people for more than 30 mins before they ignored you and texted replies to friends. You can be a late adapter of change but at some point, either from peer or kid pressure you have to change. So it is a force, you have to reckon with, sooner or later.

I was on line today and a message came up on the screen Skype. (Marie and Noel are on Line). I clicked the video call and got an "Hello, Hello, we can't see you but we can hear you" I directed them to the video call button and "Oh! we can see you, we can see you!" came loud and clear. It was my mom. She said "I just clicked on the big 'S' out of curiosity". We had an hour long skype call. It was 1:00am in Ireland when the call started, "I have to remember that" was the finish to our call. They are 87 and 86 respectively. They call got a bit fuzzy once or twice and my parents remarked that I was not coming in clearly. How cool is that that they are 6,250 miles away and it was like we were in the same room. We immediately adapted to the change and they even critiqued the quality of the connection.

Change can be cruel but 'time heals everything'! It is true time dulls the senses. Recently a friend and fellow machine shop owner asked did he do the right thing in turning away a client. The client was making prosthetic hands for people who suffered during the Hutu and Tutsi clashes many years ago. The machine shop owner lost a big medical R & D client who closed recently and he is on his uppers. The prosthetic client is a well to-do businessman, judged to be making a buck on the development of the prosthesis. The real change is that in America and specifically in the SF Bay area all small machine shops are going out of business. It is impossible to compete directly with pricing and delivery from China. You change or go bankrupt. We cannot compete with China at present. I had to take a full time job to support my family--I kept my business on the side-- but I made a great living for 12-13 years from it as my only income. I now travel to China to have things made for those I work for. When I get back, America is depressing for many weeks, until I reconcile that I chose to be here.

Change is an attitude. You are open to it or you are forced to come around to it eventually.

Early adapters can reap earlier benefits. For instance I should have closed my business in 2,000 and brokered Injection Mold Making from China. I would have been far ahead of the game. I could not believe that I had just paid $130,000 for an EDM machine and could not really afford to keep the doors open. Pure stupidity and 80+ hr weeks saved me from bankruptcy. I was a very poor changeling.

America is doomed if it does not change and do it quickly. Our manufacturing base is actually in China---design is being done there--- we will be totally redundant if we do not change immediately. Low cost and low paying jobs will and are coming back first. American immigrants will do these jobs but your sons and daughters will have little choice but to do them also. It will last a decade as Asia will be reluctant to source expensive work to America, we have to fight for our jobs on every front and tax the bejapers out of stuff coming from countries that subsidize unfair trade and unfair monetary policy.

In conclusion, I listened and heeded those who said that only 'donkey work' would go offshore, the design and engineering would always be done in America. I see some of those people occasionally and they are all working in different businesses now. They have had to change.

Change " do it often and do it early".