I don’t know if you, like me, love change.  I have always loved change.  I love the changing seasons, I love new technology, I was one of the first 10,000 people on LinkedIn and yes I do have an iPhone 7 Plus – of course.

There are a lot of great sayings about change – relating to business – like – If you are not growing you are dying.  Which of course is about change, since growth means things are changing.  I love the George Bernard Shaw quote – “Progress is impossible without Change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything”.

But is ALL change good?   Have you ever heard the expression ‘Change for Changes sake’?   Do you ever feel like sometimes companies change things just because they have nothing better to do?  It’s like when you go in your favourite supermarket, where you have shopped forever, and you know where everything is so it only takes you 20 or 30 minutes to do a full weeks shop.  And they have changed it.

So, suddenly, instead of taking 20 minutes the shop takes an hour, you end up spending a lot more, with things you didn’t go in for (which is precisely their evil master plan) and you end up without the gravy and your favourite biscuits because you couldn’t be bothered walking down yet another aisle and by the time you asked someone you were on row 24 and your gravy was on row 3.

Well, I am kind of feeling that way about Microsoft at the moment, or more specifically – LinkedIn.  They announced changes a while back and they have now begun to roll them out.   There were all sorts of good reasons given for the changes like “better user experience”.

The goal, according to Director of Engineering at LinkedIn, Chris Pruett, is “to ensure you can seamlessly access the most relevant professional conversations, content and opportunities whether you’re on our mobile app or on our desktop experience.”

Yeah right!  Having tried to pull our usual monthly client reports at the end of January, I can tell you it is neither ‘seamless’ nor a ‘better user experience’.   Now, not everything has been rolled out and not everyone currently has the new stuff.  However, it is starting to look a bit like this…

Less functionality, more confusion.  UNLESS…….. wait for it.   You pay $79 a month to go to Sales Navigator.

Well, maybe that is me jumping the gun.  Maybe when it is all rolled out it will all be lovely, there will be MORE functionality not less for the free users, and everything will be so much more ‘seamless’. Or maybe – it will be like the supermarket – where everything has changed, it takes you ages to get round because nothing is where you are expecting it to be and it ends up costing you a lot more.

Just call me disgruntled of Heald Green!

I wait with bated breath.

If you have a bug bear about social media – let us know and we can either console each other or maybe we can have a virtual coffee and I can help you solve your problems.   Email me on [email protected]