Change is good. Dilution? Not so much.

"Change is omnipresent" ~ echoes the saying. I agree, but I'm mindful of the results of change, too. "Don't lose your soul to dine well for a week", is what I say.  Here's my example... The X Games. They didn't have those when I was young enough to compete, but if they did, I may be blogging about double backflips on bikes and the injuries I sustained in an effort to win an ESPN gold medal.  What a boom for action sports, a whole show in both winter and summer focusing on offbeat sports that look infinitely more appealing to youth than being the 10th man on a little league squad. A multi-day televised event and collection of sports where the chubby long-haired kid had just the same amount of chance at winning as the provebial quarterback au popular. Providing he or she did their training!

The X Games burst onto the scene with some sports you'd seen before. Maybe these were things you had tried and now wished you had stuck with, like skateboarding on wavy streets or BMX bike jumping. The best part about X Games is they always were fantastic at introducing new extreme sports to the masses... things like skysurfing (parachutists on snowboards doing tricks in freefall), barefoot waterski jumping and surfing.  These alternative sports brought plenty of viewers to the ESPN networks out of curiosity... like what the heck are these people doing and let's see some more crashes! Surfing, possibly the original extreme sport, shocks me with it's lack of presence in the last few years of the contest.  What about climbing? The race between two people up a rock wall? That was fun to watch!  I don't understand how the X Games brand has become so watered down, now we only have 4 disciplines of summer games (Moto, skateboarding, BMX and Rally cars, where'd they come from?) and 3 types of winter sports (skiing, snowboarding and snowmobile). The organizers seemed to have lost their teeth for the extreme and are now safely delivering what "most people" and big $$ advertisers want to see. These sports are very fun to watch, but I miss the crazier things you could only see on the X Games. Remember Street Luge? Let's take superfitted skateboards to winding paved hills, lie flat on them, and race to the bottom.  That's extreme! Can you believe X Games BMX jumping doesn't take place on dirt anymore? Or that Moto has a contest for "Best Whip?" Seriously, one trick and you get a medal? Something's gone wrong here.

For those who subscribe to the "change is constant" mantra, I get it.  The X Games today are not supposed to be the same as when they started in the 80s. Has ESPN left the action sports fan unsettled in making a few popular events the backbone of their efforts? I think so.  Have other businesses focused on the new and exciting only to leave their reason for existence behind? Yes. My thoughts here are simple. Innovate, yes. Change, improve, research, test, reconfigure, reissue, repeat, yes. All the while, keep grounded to your main cause, the thrust behind what got you where you are. Using that as a base, build and grow a business or a brand. If you make widgets, make more widgets, different kinds of widgets, make products that accompany widgets, make packaging for widgets, etc. But make widgets all the way through the growth process. You may develop into a company that used to make widgets and now make much more. At some point may widgets drop from the product lineup? My guess is, only when the soul of the business leaves or dies and a new regime is at the helm. The new skipper finds less connection to the reasons that spawned the idea, product or company perhaps. Change, but don't dilute the soul of what you're doing in your career, your business or your personal life. And keep a widget on your desk in plain sight to always remind you where your soul should be.

-dm