When seeking change, soft skills give ideas wings

Jodi Perry takes us through her process of positive change leadership.

Change is coming.

It may arrive quickly or in slow motion, you may initiate it or have to respond to it, but it’ll be here before you know it, and it’ll be at least a little bit uncomfortable.

It’s no secret: Change is the one true constant. How you manage it, however, is your prerogative.

Jodi Perry has a lot of ideas about managing change. In her 30 years at Raymond James, she has led it, responded to it and in some case been it. She was the first woman to be a recruiter, the first woman to be a division director and the first woman to lead a Private Client Group division. Recently finishing a five-year tenure as the president of the Raymond James Independent Contractors Division, she is now the head of national recruiting, a new role in the org chart.

With the move, she returns to her old stomping grounds – the largest part of her career has been in recruiting – and looks to keep the firm’s highly successful recruiting apparatus thriving in a rapidly shifting industry landscape.

She enjoys the challenge of change management.

"There's something I really like about the process of identifying something that needs addressing, the process of discovering what the solutions could be, and then getting people onboard to see them through,” Perry said.

Change leaders can operate in any level of an organization, and at any scale, she said. You may be an executive at a publicly traded company, part of a tight team of professional peers, or the CEO/CFO/CIO/CMO of a growing sole proprietorship and change can be within your power.

The particulars differ, of course, but every change leader faces many of the same challenges. Uncertainty, scope creep and general change aversion are common roadblocks. There is also the age-old adage wielded against would-be change agents: “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

Then again, it’s universally agreed that it’s not better to let the plumbing burst before locating your pipe wrench. Thus, we get the essential tension of proactive change, particularly in a system as complex and interdependent as a business. Often, you’re setting out to fix something that’s not strictly broken.

This piece was featured in Aspire Magazine, a biannual publication from the Women Financial Advisors Network. View the latest.

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