Change Agent - Issue 29

By choosing to zoom across such a large area, he was able to listen to anyone, anytime, without getting stressed out. He didn't plague himself with rigid rules and standards; he just wanted to find something great. Hammond had broad "zoomwidth." I'm betting that if you had asked him whether finding all of those different kinds of singers meant that he had to "change" every day, he would have said no. He viewed each day not as a high-stress, change-filled event but as part of his zooming continuum.

Compare Hammond's zoomwidth with your own. Or compare it with your company's zoomwidth. Martha Stewart, for example, had no trouble turning her book-writing business into a $100 million media empire -- without compromising what she stands for. But the folks at Rolling Stone were too entrenched in the magazine paradigm to see that they could have been MTV -- without having to change their foundation. The people at Omaha Steaks realized that however they sold their steaks -- by phone, by mail, or on the Net -- it was all the same thing, only different. By contrast, it took Lands' End years to sell products online.

I grew up during the glory days of franchised restaurants -- McDonald's, Basin-Robbins, Caravel, Pizza Hut. None of them had any zoomwidth at all. The structure of these organizations made any sort of adjustment seem like a major threat, rather than an opportunity to zoom. Today, as the population changes and as people's needs change, many of these chains are facing a major crisis. Kentucky Fried Chicken even had to change its name to KFC -- so that it could start selling nonfried foods!

Compare this mentality with that of the Limited Inc., a company that gladly zooms its merchandise at every single store at least once a month -- whether it needs to or not. At Limited stores, introducing a new clothing style is easy: Managers don't have to go very far up in the organization to get approval. They just zoom -- and it happens.

Question five: Why is there so much pain in the business world? One reason is that most companies are now stretched beyond their zoomwidth. Everything is seen as a threat; nothing as an opportunity. Instead of changing, companies need to zoom. By increasing its zoomwidth -- by hiring people who love to zoom -- a company can grow, adapt, and maybe even transform itself.

Here is my handy, five-step zoom starter kit -- a list of five simple things that you can do to practice zooming.

1. For dinner tonight, eat a food that you've never tasted. Then try another one tomorrow night.

2. On your way to work tomorrow, listen to a CD from a musical genre that you hate or that's new to you.

3. Every week, read a magazine that you've never read before.

4. Once a week, meet with someone from outside your area of expertise. Go to a trade show on a topic in which you have no interest whatsoever.

5. Change the layout of your office.

Sounds stupid, doesn't it? Like a bad self-improvement book. But if you can master these five steps, you'll discover that the art of zooming makes it easier for you to view everything as an opportunity. In other words, you'll find that it's easier to sign Bob Dylan when you think you're looking for Count Basie.

Question six: Isn't all of this just a lot of semantic maneuvering? Why waste time on a word or two? The zoomer's answer: Words are important. They give you a lens through which you can see why you (and your company) are finding it so hard to move as quickly as you'd like.

The next time your company is looking at a big, life-threatening change, stop! Ignore the big, life-or-death, change-or-die issue. Ask yourself question seven: How much room do you have to zoom? After all, a company with an appetite for zooming will always be quicker, nimbler, and more fun than one that's doomed never to zoom.

Seth Godin (sgodin@fastcompany.com) is permission-marketing yahoo! at Yahoo! His new book is "Permission Marketing: Turning Strangers into Friends and Friends into Customers" (Simon & Schuster, 1999).