Daily Inspiration: “When collaboration is critical, coordinate your complexities!”

“When collaboration is critical, coordinate your complexities!” – Futurist  Jim Carroll

If you didn’t already notice, check out my feet. What an odd position!

I swear sometimes that I failed doing the hokey-pokey in kindergarten; my personal trainer is sometimes amazed that I can golf, given my general inability to perform some complex routines in the gym. I blame the experience of being a failure at doing the hokey-pokey for decades of intense psychological struggle as I worked to master complex sports like skiing and golf. Just kidding. In this photo, I’m on stage at a retail conference in Orlando, speaking about the fast pace of change in that world. Retailers need lots of new partners – drop shippers, same day delivery partners, e-commerce engineers and more. That’s a new set of complexity they didn’t have to manage before! Complex coordination is a massive important new skill in the high velocity economy. Many of my keynotes are focused on the theme of collaboration – how do we better share ideas internally? How do we align ourselves to new external partners to get better access to skills that we don’t necessarily have? How can we challenge ourselves in terms of our structure in order to get things done faster? These are the questions my clients often ask me to address on stage. The world of business is entering a new era of complexities, and the ability to manage that will be critical to their success.  If they can’t, then they might find that they are the victims of the new form of hokey-pokey for the 21st century!