A friend was talking the other day about the wealth of changes underway at her company. As she spoke, I thought about the many changes I've helped companies to make…some at times of a downturn in the economy, others because the company's growth was exploding. In each case, the change was happening faster than the company could adapt to it on their own. 

And I thought about the changes I've made in my professional and personal life. Some changes I welcomed or initiated. Others, almost unnoticed, crept quietly in. Still others, clearly uninvited, blasted through the door to stay, like it or not.

Some ways of making change are better than others.

Think about the ways you and your company typically handle it:

Do you face it?

Move toward it – or embrace it, even?

Or do you circle it warily before diving in?

Do you try, with all your might, to run away? (Yes, I've tried this one, too, on occasion. It rarely works).

Think back on a very successful change you've made in the past, whether in your professional or personal life.

What happened to make it work well? What, specifically, did you do to make the process more effective?

- Were you guided by a vision, a theme or team rallying cry that kept you focused through the ups and downs that inevitably accompanied the process?

- Did you use a series of experiments, beta tests, and enhancements to adapt to change in smaller "chunks," allowing you to adapt, bit by bit, to what you discovered along the way?

- Or did you create a solid plan and then focus just on each task at hand, digging in and plowing through each one – like it or not – until success was at hand?

- Or did you completely "wing it?"

Whatever you learned in the past, tap those valuable lessons the next time you're looking for ways to adapt, accelerate or embrace the inevitable process of change.