Earlier this week movers came to the home of our dear friends and packed everything they had to prepare for a move to another country.

• It’s a great career opportunity for him.
• It means more daily freedom for her.

But it’s still stressful.

• Anticipation, doubt and fear swirl together about the unknowns.
• And at the same time they process the emotions of an ending before the new beginning…

As 2015 comes to an end, you may be considering a new beginning, a fresh start, a change or a reinvention…

Hollis Thomases knows a thing or two about reinventing. After graduating college, she moved to Baltimore knowing no one and having no job. She had a 10-year career working for trade associations, small businesses and large corporations and left it all in 1998 to start her first company, a digital marketing & advertising firm. After successfully growing that company for 15 years into a multi-million dollar business she felt it was time to move on to her next incarnation. Her pursuit of her own reinvention led her to realize the need to help others on their journeys, too, and ReinventionWorks, was born with the goal of helping others with their career/life reinventions.

Hollis describes the reinvention process as interconnected phases that are brought on by deliberately choosing to change.

It looks like this:

• The Decision to Change
• Fortifying the Foundation to Change
• Visioning the “Next Future”
• Planning
• Execution
• Zig
• Zag
• Hop
• Repeat

The Decision. Because reinvention is deliberate, it has to begin with an intentional decision: I/We want to change. How and to what degree to change gets defined by each person or organization, but with intention must come purpose: why do we want to change? This purpose is crucial because the strength of belief in purpose will drive the rest of the process.

Fortifying the Foundation. Just because someone or something wants to change doesn’t mean it will happen. Change is hard – sometimes very hard – and the attempt to change can be thwarted by all kinds of toxic or self-limited thinking. The Foundational Phase of The Reinvention Continuum must occur early in order to conquer these obstacles; otherwise, the intention to reinvent will likely not succeed. In organizations, leadership must recognize and address these obstacles first or they should not expect new and different outcomes. For individuals, now might be the time to seek professional or peer guidance and support.

Visioning. When the Foundational work has gotten pretty far along or completed and the barriers cleared, Visioning can take place. Visioning harkens back to purpose: Where do we see ourselves reinventing towards and why. Leading visioning exercises should keep two things in mind: 1) Purpose 2) Intentional forward propulsion. Visioning activities that only serve to tread water have no place in The Reinvention Continuum.

Planning & Execution. Much like the development of business or marketing strategies, once you have direction, planning on how to get there and then executing on that plan comes more easily. That said, perhaps even more often than with business strategy, so too come zig-zags and hops.

Zig, Zag, Hop, Repeat. I like to describe the reinvention process as “intentional imperfection.” People should enter The Reinvention Continuum expecting a lot to not go as planned. And when things don’t go as planned, it leads to pivots, turns, tweaks, adjustments, backslides, leaps forward, and all other kinds of chaos. Leading through this chaos – and sustaining energy and momentum during it – can be one of the most challenging parts of reinvention. At the individual level, it feels as if just as much is at stake as if it were at the business level. In other words, at the business level, dollars and cents matter, but at the personal level, one’s essence matters. To lead through intentional imperfection, why not start imaging the chaos and work backwards?

17 Necessary Skills to Tackle Reinvention

If you are considering a reinvention, here’s a list of attributes and skills that will be required:

1. Self-Awareness
2. Honesty
3. Courage
4. Confidence
5. High Risk Tolerance
6. Adventurous
7. Adaptable
8. Committed
9. Resilient
10. Sense of Humor
11. Enthusiasm
12. Generous
13. Participatory
14. Problem-Solving
15. Open-Mindedness
16. Imagination
17. Organization

Reinvention is going on all around us every day. It’s inevitable. Get prepared now, and when you come to that fork the road, you can make the intentional decision to change on your own terms.

As I hugged my friends goodbye for the last time in this place, lyrics from a Michael W. Smith song rang through my mind,

Packing up the dreams God planted.

In the fertile soil of you.

I can’t believe the hopes He’s granted.

Means a chapter of your life is through.

 

---

If you are trying to decide if you should stay in our comfort zone or move – you will find value in this article.

If you are ready to pack the dreams that God planted in you,

and unbox them in a new place or a new way…

Hollis is gearing up for a big event in January to help you get started.

Check out her Mega Reinvention 2016!