You Are Allowed To Change Your Mind

How do you feel about changing you mind?
For most people, the prospect of changing their mind comes with shame.
It means admitting they were wrong, both to themselves and to their network.
It opens them up to criticism, and a series of unflattering labels.
When faced with the prospect of shame and unflattering labels, most people are tempted to stick with their existing beliefs.

It’s a huge missed opportunity.
Why not change your mind, if better information becomes available or your circumstances change?
I’m not suggesting that you change your mind for the sake of it, but rather revisit your beliefs and update them if you see better options.
That’s not flip-flopping, that’s just being smart.

Let’s have a look at some of the areas in which a new opinion might bring more joy or better performance.

Your Intent
You are allowed to change your mind about your goals, your mission and vision, and your values.
They are not set in stone.
You can decide to treat people better, to start caring, to show more empathy, to look more critically at your environment and what affects it.
You can change the type of people you wish to serve, or change the scope of your goals, bigger or smaller.
You can re-rank your priorities, or replace the list entirely.
If your dreams are no longer inspiring you, replace them with a dream that actually lights you up.

Your Impact Model
You are allowed to rewrite your recipe for change.
That means finding new ways of helping people, working with different partners, using different interventions and different forms of outcome measurement.
A great example of this is Thank You, the social enterprise who recently announced a change in their impact model.
Their open letter is humble, honest, and an interesting case study.
If you find a better way of achieving your mission, it’s irresponsible not to do it.

Your Business Model
You are allowed to focus on different Customer Segments, maybe there are groups of people that didn’t exist 10 years ago, or whose needs have drastically changed.
You are allowed to reframe your Value Proposition, focusing on different strengths or making an offer that wasn’t relevant in the past.
You can form different types of Customer Relationships, either through automation, personalisation, or changing the voice of your brand.
You can use different Channels, especially since conversion rates have changed so much, or because your customers are easier/harder to access, or because some previously undesirable Channels are now much more lucrative.
You can change your mind about your Key Resources, creating new assets or selling your existing assets, hiring different roles or different leaders, or setting up different systems that can improve your results.
You can run a different set of Key Activities, prioritising different processes and spending different amount of time and energy than you did previously.
You can work with different Key Partners, either by outsourcing, co-designing or taking things in-house.

Your Financial Model
You can restructure your costs, paying more or less for your components, raising or lowering your breakeven point, or offer pay raises to reward/attract great people.
You can change your prices, either the numbers or the packages on offer.
You can target a different part of the market, or intentionally grow your sales in specific areas.
You can decide to suddenly “become a numbers person”, developing an interest and appreciation for how you make, spend and keep money in the business.

Your Testing Strategy
You can become the type of person who loves and believes in testing.
You can go down the analytics path or the quick-and-dirty path.
You can decide to be more entrepreneurial, more risk averse, or more creative.
You can learn how to use modern testing tools and techniques, refusing to invest in an idea until it has proven its validity in a fair experiment.

Your Management Style
You can change your culture, through who you hire, who you fire, what gets rewarded and what isn’t tolerated.
You can change how you pay people, both the format and the amount.
You can change your governance structure, as well as who you turn to in times of crisis and joy.
You can change the standards you use for yourself, as well as the standards you use for others.
You can put more skin in the game, or make the most of the brilliant minds you have on your payroll.

“But You Said…”
This is the main reason people don’t want to change their mind – they might be teased.
Teased is the perfect word for it, because it’s not actually a severe consequence.
“Oooh, look at Mr. I-Hate-TikTok suddenly posting on his TikTok!”
“Well well well, I thought you said you’d never hire someone who…”
“What happened to your old philosophy?”
“I thought you wanted to be a…”
These are uncomfortable moments.
What’s more uncomfortable – teasing, or staying with an obsolete worldview?
There are a few options here – laugh along with them, take yourself less seriously, or put on a thicker skin.
Your new approach will eventually speak for itself, like when you start enjoying your new career path or find success with a new business model.

It Starts With Forgiveness
The first step towards changing your mind is to remove any sense of blame.
Perhaps you made mistakes.
Perhaps you help stupid opinions – the opinions are stupid, but you’re not.
Perhaps new options have come along that weren’t on the table in the past.
Perhaps you’ve matured, and now see the world through adult eyes.

I encourage you; forgive your former self.
Either you didn’t know better, or you did know better but now see the error of your ways.
The purpose of changing your mind isn’t to condemn yourself or pass on blame, it’s to focus on what needs to happen next.

Shifting To The Future
What traps people is the idea of a “sunk cost” – you’ve invested in a decision for so long that to change would mean sealing in your losses.
e.g. buying a motorbike for $20k, it’s fallen in value to $6k so “you may as well keep it”.
Except, if a genie took your bike and gave you $6k in cash, what would you do with it?
Buy another bike for $6k?
Almost definitely not!
So in that case, why not sell the bike and move on?

This is changing your mindset towards the future – ignoring the sunk costs, and instead re-deciding what you want to take into the next stage of your work and life.
If you hired someone who hasn’t worked out, it’s time to move them on in an honouring way.
If you started the wrong degree, it’s time to drop out and find something more exciting.
If you thought the market was going a certain way and it hasn’t, it’s time to re-examine what the market is doing today and tomorrow.

If you wouldn’t make the same decision again, then today is the next best day to course-correct.
Rather than wishing for a time machine, why not rip the band-aid and find a path that leads to a future you like?

Finally, consider this: anyone who makes you feel bad for making an upgrade is not worth keeping in your inner circle.
A few questions are fine, but if people discourage you from taking positive steps, then it’s time to reposition their place in your advisory group.
They either stick with their mistakes for far too long, or they don’t want to see you make improvements.