Daily Inspiration: Change Management – “You can’t keep using old methods to deal with new realities”

“You can’t keep using old methods to deal with new realities” – Futurist Jim Carroll

Are you driving with a stick shift in the era of video game controllers? If so, ask yourself this question – how many of your actions are based on ideas and assumptions that are outdated and obsolete?

Things from our past often bear little relevance in tomorrow’s world. I well remember the day I was driving my Jeep – equipped with a standard stick shift – and my 3-year-old son asked why I was driving with a video game controller. That singular moment helped to get across to me the fact that change is permanent, reality is transient, and disruption is imminent.

That moment in time and recognition of the velocity of change has been reinforced as the control system of modern vehicles has morphed, shifted, and evolved into something unrecognizable. Consider the typical Formula 1 controller – and compare it to the stick shift of yesterday. Things change much?

Are you driving with a stick shift in the era of video game controllers?

Maybe it’s a good time to re-examine your habitual ways of thinking and acting, which may be rooted in outdated ideas or assumptions. Think about some of the traps we can fall into. Assuming job security into tomorrow based on skills that are going out of date, and a requirement that we must continuously update our skills.  Clinging to traditional marketing channels while consumer habits shift online and to mobile. Keeping in place a leadership structure of well-defined organizational hierarchies when faster companies embrace flat structures and fast teams. Measuring productivity solely by hours worked rather than output and results. Dragging out decisions and actions when decisiveness and speed are critical.

These are the traps of complacency.

What about your mindset? Are you operating under the assumption that past successes guarantee future achievements? Attempting to control employees with rigid policies rather than cultivating an innovative culture? Prioritizing cost-cutting over investing in R&D, technology, and talent development. Dismissing new market disruptors based on how things have “always” been done in an industry. Acting slow in a world that is fast?

These are the sins of being trapped in a static mindset in a volatile world.

Use the modern tools that surround you – and shift your future faster!