Why would it be reasonable for any professional to learn how to tackle and manage the information overload and onslaught of data that flushes through our mind stream like a pounding waterfall bashing on our heads every single day?
Change As Catalyst
To paraphrase Thomas Björkman making his presentation on ’The Nordic Secret’, outlining the need for a shift In mindset to tackle increased complexity:
We can clearly see that today’s global citizens need to go through a fairly large number of transformational technological shifts, facing its impact, in a single lifetime. Sometimes even in just a few years.
Just a couple of generations back we could anticipate how the world would look and feel tomorrow, next week or in a year. Perhaps even a generation ahead of us.
This is no longer the case. The world around us now shift with an increasingly accelerating speed, which for most - if not for all of us, is almost incomprehensible and to some extent even could feel somewhat unbearable at times.
We might get to a point in which after going to bed at night we will wake up to a world which is hard to recognize from the day before. For some people it may even already feel like this. Nothing is the same. Everything is different.
We can just refer to politics or economics and we’ll experience radical shifts at the blink of an eye. Not to mention environmental disasters - and least but not last the technological shifts that will alter our entire lifestyle almost in the blink of a moment; Internet, mobility, now AI. Just to mention a few shifts that many of us have experienced in the last 20-30 years. These technological shifts are transforming how we see the world and how we relate to each other.
Navigating Complex Transformation
How do we sanely navigate this type of landscape where mind boggling transformation are a tightly integrated part of our everyday life?
Attention & Intention.
Especially for any type of leader, or an entrepreneur those shifts are both pivotal and critical to handle and manage with a clear mind and purpose.
Done correctly it may give your enterprise and organization leeway to maneuver and ultimately survive. Done badly, or wrongly your decision may sink the entire ship. With all its crew. Just like a captain on a ship outside a reef infested shore during a storm in the middle of the night hundred years ago or so. Just imagine.
As a transformation agent you need to constantly upgrade your knowledge base and continuously calibrate your learning in order to know how to navigate the stormy waters of infinite information overload.
Recalibrating Mindset
Here’s a personal and perhaps a bit silly, but not the less revealing example from the daily production of texts that gradually transform how well we are able to write and produce publications.
Writing this particular text I use an app on my iPhone called Bear. The text I produce is mainly aimed for reading on a small screen-based mobile device.
Since my native tongue is Swedish, my English perhaps sometimes is not always perfect and spelling can be an issue, especially since my eyesight is no longer support tiny text on screen.
In my early days as a professional, twenty years ago or so, working as an Art Director Assistant at one of our countries leading food magazines, proof reading was a long process, many times involving as many as 3 people, taking a day or sometimes two.
Now writing text in the Bear-app, with my thumb mind you, proofreading is instant and automatic. I don’t even need to think about it. The app auto correct every instance of an error almost before I’ve made them. Feels like magic to me.
Our skills have now shifted from learning how to spell and proofread to knowing which app perform this task flawlessly. I guess this is what we sometimes can refer to as digital literacy.
This is just one tiny everyday example, perhaps with not that great of an impact for one individual, or it might and will matter greatly. But put this in the larger context of enterprises, as let’s say a publishing house, it could prove a somewhat different story.
Economy of Instant Change
The economical impact of a seemingly small and insignificant technology can become huge and likely make or break any type of venture or organization.
Now imagine that you scale this type of scenario onto how people are able to perform and work together utilizing a number of instances of technologies, frequently and at scale.
Automation today may be seen by many as a threat to the job market, but it could equally be seen as a great opportunity for an infinite number of businesses and enterprises.
What type of value are we keen on producing? What type of world are we aiming to create?
More about that and how organizational silos are becoming a sure way to sink an enterprise. Silo’ed Corporations and organizational structures are much looking like the Titanic of the ‘instant transformation age’, or Age of Context as John Hagel perhaps would put it.
Stay tuned for Alignment!