By Steve Brown
I’ve been monitoring the presidential debates and taxes are always debated on with great emotion. Taxes impact us all. But, there are other kinds of taxes that are not talked about very often.
Other kinds of taxes.
One is the kind Dave Ramsey calls ‘stupid taxes’. They arise from the stupid things we do like spending money we didn’t really need to spend. I have a friend that has a health club membership. He faithfully pays his dues every month and yet he never goes to the gym. He proudly declares it is his ‘fat tax'.
‘Change resistance tax’
In our business there is a hidden tax I see many businesses and organizations faithfully pay without considering its real cost to their bottom line. It is the ‘change resistance tax’. Every week I stumble onto new software services that empower an organization or business to perform tasks or process information and business communications at a fraction of the cost of the legacy systems they offer to replace. Many of these solutions are virtually free.
Despite their clear advantages and the fact that they are free, I often hear the same objections over and over. I have come to the conclusion that complaining is just human nature. I imagine that hundreds of years ago, these same objections were being used but in a slightly different context.
Why oh why?
“Why do I need to learn how to throw a spear at Og when it's easier to just walk over and hit him with my club?” I imagine someone grumbled way back in the day. Or, “Why would I want to take the time to sit down and write a letter to Olaf, when I can just walk over there and tell it to his face?” Or, “Why would I pay to send a telegraph to Oliver, when I could just sit down and write him a letter?” Or, 'why would I text Oscar when I could call him on his cell phone?'
Today, we hear just as many questions or statements about new technologies that will sound just as ridiculous in the not so distant future. “Why would I use Google + Hangout when I can just pay for a conference call?” Or, “Why would I generate a document in the cloud and share it out when I could just write it and save it on my computer and send it as an attachment in my email?” Or, “Why do I need to set up an online pay option when I can just print and mail an invoice?”
Learn and grow, resist and lose.
The orginzational resistance to change comes from a person or group of people trying to avoid having to invest a bit of time to learn something new. Learning something new constantly is the reality of our time. The mindset of using energies to resist any kind of change to maintain and even defend all things as they are is to declare oneself against nature. Nothing stays the same. All things change.
The desire to learn and implement new technology is another excellent way to gain advantage over your competitors. Embrace change. Your competitor more than likely avoids it or even spends energy resisting change. They are most likely proudly paying a heavy ‘change resistance tax’ which gives you a great advantage.
Don’t pay when you don’t have to.
Let the debate in your organization or team be about how to best exploit the new cheap and even free technology now available. Grow profits by changing the direction of the debate in your organization to how you can avoid paying any more taxes than you really should. Just be sure your list of taxes to avoid also includes ‘stupid tax’, ‘fat tax’, and that sneaky devious profit killing 'change resistance tax’.
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