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“All great changes are preceded by chaos.” I can’t think of a word that more accurately describes the state of my closet this past January than “chaos.” Little by little, a fabric monster had grown out of control until the suitcase from my holiday travels lay still packed on my floor without a single hanger or square inch of drawer space available.

That was my breaking point. I was finally ready to do something about it and, lucky for me, I had just discovered “Tidying Up with Marie Kondo” on Netflix.

For those who aren’t familiar, Marie Kondo is the organization guru behind the international craze known as the KonMari Method. This new Netflix series that brought her home and closet organization method to the masses has resonated so well that thrift stores across the country are seeing a surge in donations. 

I dove head first into the KonMari Method. My ambitions even spread to my living room and kitchen. Over the next two weeks, I spent time every day moving piles and bags of clothes, and reorganizing cabinets and drawers until finally I was done decluttering my home. The outcome of this effort was life changing. Months later, my apartment is still organized and much easier to manage.

To Change or Not to Change

In life and in work, we are constantly assessing the relative risk between keeping things the way they are and changing.

To keep things the way they are often means to live with inconvenience and dysfunction. The nature of technology is one of planned obsolescence, meaning that whatever inconvenience with which you are dealing now compounds exponentially with each product launch and iteration of software updates.  In other words, change brings more inconvenience and dysfunction, but if done correctly, reduces or eliminates it over time.

One would think that embracing change would be the obvious choice, but it often isn’t. Why? Because the decision to embark on a change means to temporarily live with increased inconvenience and dysfunction. I had chosen to live with a messy closet rather than take the time to organize it in the same way that I have seen clients hang on to floppy disks, mainframe systems written in COBOL, and an active email chain that started in 2014. (Yes, really.)

Large transformative change is a hard choice to make because it requires you to finally come face to face with the things you pushed to the back of your closet.

Find Your Marie Kondo

Once you decide that a transformative change is necessary, you must face some hairy logistical questions:

• As it is, my team and I work full time. How can we possibly add another project to our plate?
• Is this really the best solution to our situation/problem?
• How long will this take? How much will it cost? What is the return on investment?

In my case, I had the capacity available to do the work, I just needed Marie Kondo’s guidance around the strategy and methodology of home organization.  Like me, you might find yourself in need of a guru to guide your company through a business problem or major change – enter Kenway.

At Kenway, we are dedicated to providing the right-size solution for each client’s enterprise transformation needs – whether that be strategic insight and planning to executing a corporate restructuring initiative, or ground-level change management expertise to transition from a legacy software system.

While we don’t have a Netflix series just yet, we’d love to talk to you about the “Kenway Method.” To learn more, reach out to us at info@kenwayconsulting.com.