“At this very moment, you are surrounded by ‘modern things’ that will become ‘things from the olden days’ during your lifetime!” – Futurist Jim Carroll
We live in the era of acceleration – and with that, things become a part of our life and then disappear faster than ever before. The knowledge we have at this moment in time will be obsolete tomorrow; the unique skills we possess today will be irrelevant in a few years; the cool new product we just bought is soon to be a relic of the past; the business model we are succeeding with today will be our downfall tomorrow.
What do you do in an era of accelerating change? Change faster! Understand what comes next and shift towards it! Work towards tomorrow rather than just concentrating on today. Take the time to understand what you need to do in the next moment – not just this moment. Live in tomorrow, not just today!
Many of you might know that for years – from about 1999 – I told the story of “Things from the Olden Days” while on stage.
Today is the slowest day of technological change for the rest of your life. Each and every day, it only gets faster.
I crystallized that into a blog post I did 18 years ago – “That’s from the olden days, daddy!“, commenting on the things that my young sons thought were positively ancient. I built into a story on stage about the need for fast innovation.
One of the most important roles for any executive today is ensuring that the organization is strategically positioned to deal with relentless, ongoing change.
Everyone is faced with rapidly evolving business models, new and unique customer demands, heightened competition, rapid product development and even faster product obsolescence, and increasing career specialization, not to mention dramatic rates of knowledge growth. It is important to be cognizant of the potential impact of all of these trends, in order to clearly assess how an organization should be responding to change.
It is important that you don’t become complacent about the rate of change that envelopes us today. That’s why it can be very useful to have a barometer that helps to measure the rate of change.
In my case, I track what my two boys – aged 8 and 10 – happen to think about the world around them. Their world is a very different one, in that there are a number of things that we take for granted that already to them, are “things from the olden days.”
Are you watching for fast change, living in tomorrow, rather than just today?
Read the full, original article here: https://jimcarroll.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/articles/csae/oldendays.pdf
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