If you always do what you always did, you'll always get what you always got.

This has always been my favorite saying. Of course, I am addicted to change. Sometimes I wonder if I create crises because I enjoy them so much (and I am pretty good at solving them too). During my career as an executive at a public company, I was the one that was always sent around the world to 'fix' situations. It certainly kept me challenged and even seemed like a pretty good career strategy. After all, kudos if you fixed a bad situation and chances are you wouldn't make it worse - at least not in the short term.

I remember very early on that I had a young manager. We were both big agents of change - code for outside the mainstream. We thought it would be a great fun to start a consulting company that suggested wholesale changes within companies. Getting paid to shake things up, how much fun would that be?

My favorite cartoon shows two guys deep in a dungeon, heavily chained, with absolutely no escape, ever. And the one guy is saying, "Now, here's my plan." I think it depicts everything I believe. Never, ever, give up.

There's a reason I made 38 of 40 quarters of revenue targets. I always had one more burst of energy, one more creative way to make it happen, one more 'one for the gipper speech' to my incredibly fabulous staff. The two quarters I didn't make - one where I had just taken over a failing division (which soon turned around), the second when the head of a large Brazilian bank that was about to sign my $1M+ contract got tossed out of office along with the President of Brazil in a corruption scandal a couple of days before the end of the quarter. You should have seen me trying to explain it to our very non-International CEO, "Remember Richard Nixon?" I began.....

So, do something different, if you want the outcome to be different. And empower your people to take risks (and allow that failure is fine sometimes too!) I think you might be pleasantly surprised at the results.

Gillian Parrillo
The Sacramento Executive