Have you ever met someone so skeptical about the real world disruption? Or maybe someone who is not in the moment and still believes in business as usual. Who does not understand the importance of being relevant. And there are some people even feel no interest in catching up.

If you asked me, what’s the most challenging thing as a professional, is to keep being relevant. Keep up with the knowledge, information, technology, the trend and so on. Keep in the know about what’s in, what’s relatable nowadays, that keeps on changing in such a fast pace. But that’s me.

On the other hand, for brands or company nowadays realizing we no longer can do business as usual. Innovation and culture shift takes the lead to a new norm and define a new mindset and also taste.

On Brian Solis recent article at the medium, in pursuit of relevance, the meaning of relevant these days would challenge organizations and executives to keep up with the evolution simply because organization culture is more rigid than they are agile. I can relate to this as I have also experience twice in undergoing change management when I had to lead a digital transformation and also for a social foundation to build a new based service for Indonesian children with cancer from underprivileged families. It is not easy. People inside the organization are more risk-averse than they are progressive. However, realized or not by the management, customers and employees are changing as times, trends and tastes evolve.

The challenge is in the people. For some company transformation might become a never ending process.

“The only way to do so is to invest in a leadership culture of empowerment, innovation and the pursuit of relevance” – Brian Solis

But how ?

To tell you the truth, I always find myself looking for answers from Brian Solis blog or articles. To find relatable learning that he might have gone thru. For me GaryVee would be my therapist (LOL). Whenever I need to get a check from reality I go to his Instagram and then I’m good :))

Anyways … the answer I got from Brian Solis video was so simple that it just hit me.

The answer, start to be empathetic.

Just so you know, what is empathy.

The difference between empathy and sympathy.

Everything about change is difficult. Put yourself in each other’s shoes. And try to figure solutions together. At least try. Because once you see the outcome eventually is great. Why, because it makes you more humancentered. After all we are all human beings. We are moved by their story and thats what we are made of. Feelings. Even business to business situation that you will find there are human beings inside that clutter of mess. As Brian shared on the video .

Make people feel inspired from what makes people relate to change as it becomes a human story. It’s about the relevancies from someone who can relate towards your business and support that relationship in every facet of the journey.

Whichever side you are in this situation, you cannot be customer centric if you are not empathic, being that “undercover boss moment”.

Update 20.12.18. to this post after reading this article on linkedin, about how empathy map could set up common grounds for multiple UX designers. It emphasis on what it is related to any human-centered design practitioner, empathy is the first and foremost element that should be determined before going to other layers of process. As the principle of human-centred design gives us the safety net to not produce a top-down solution, empathising with the user we design the solution for will avoid product failure

So dear friends, human to human, lets learn more so we can understand and then be more empathetic.

Thank you for reading !

Read also, Playing catch up on disruptive era