With Change Affecting Many Small Businesses, "Ping, The Frog" Offers Hope
To the list of animal allegories for business concepts, a noted marketing expert has added the Frog.
In Stuart Avery Gold’s case, his emphasis is on how individuals and managers can deal with and grow from change—due to either internal company factors or external factors.
His book, “Ping: A Frog In Search Of A New Pond,” offers strategies and insight on how to prosper when change comes unexpectedly and is seemingly overwhelming.
His character, a frog name Ping, not only deals with change but also with the need of many managers to seek new opportunities. In the frog's case, the issues confronted are the drying up of his “home” pond and the decisions he needs to make to regarding it.
Small businesses in particular have been buffeted with natural and economic disasters in the past few years.
Studies by experts have shown that the most prosperous companies evolve and change with an average “comfort span” of about seven years.
Employer, Employee Assessment
Likewise, employees need to access opportunities within their company and decide when “the pond is drying up and there is a need to jump to another pond.”
The book has value for managers and HR professionals concerned about employee growth and morale.
In particular, there are many lessons to learn from the book about dealing with change.
Says Gold, “Change—real change—is unsettling. When change happens, it can create the kind of fear that can take hold of even the most confident of Frogs.
He believes that fear of change can grab and seize employees with such strength that it can paralyze them.
In recent surveys, small firm managers have indicated a growing unease amongst employees as the pace of change, whether adding new technology, requiring differing healthcare programs, extending the business into new areas or even succession moves, has accelerated.
For Gold, the case can be made that change brings out the best in people and enables them and their organizations to thrive.
So, to the Parthenon of Lions, Tigers, Gorillas and other corporate symbols, Gold now adds the Frog.
For today’s small business world, it appears to be very apt.
