Daily Inspiration – Leadership & Innovation – “Your biggest opportunities will be defined by how well you deal with the challenge of change!”

“Your biggest opportunities will be defined by how well you deal with the challenge of change!” – Futurist Jim Carroll

The photo used in today’s quote comes from an event I did a few weeks ago in Charlotte, North Carolina, for the North American leadership meeting of AssaAbloy. As I mentioned last month, they’re the company you’ve probably never heard of but you use their hotel card lock systems and door locking technology regularly.

The organization brought me back as a follow-up to my 2017 keynote for the same team – it’s always nice when a client has you back for another future-oriented and innovation talk!

Looking back at my slide deck, after receiving photos from the event on the weekend, I realized I had a common theme throughout the many trends I cover – change is coming at them, and is coming at them faster than ever before. It’s what they do with that reality that matters.

That change has to do with the way they make things (“manufacturing methodologies“), the skills they use to make those things (“knowledge“), and the very things they make (“advanced connectivity in their product line.”) A lot of it has to do with the acceleration of existing technologies such as the “Industrial Internet of Things”, the arrival of ‘smart machines’ as artificial intelligence is embedded in the devices they make as well as the technology used on the assembly line. They are also seeing the ongoing evolution of cobots – or ‘cooperative robots’ that work near humans, and the eventual arrival of factory-based humanoid robots. Not only that, but the ongoing evolution of the smart home and connected industrial and commercial facilities means they will continue to have to integrate a lot of smart connectivity technology into the products they make.

The undercurrent to my talk was that much of this change is inevitable, and will have pretty profound and sweeping implications. As leaders of their organizations, they are faced with the age-old choice. Should they align to this change by adapting to the new ideas and methodologies that it represents? Or try to ignore it, wishing it away, and eventually falling behind in their markets, products, and structure as others who compete against them do a better job of aligning to this change?

That’s the choice that every one of us faces on a day-to-day basis – align to change, fight it or ignore it?

The choice should be clear, because in the long run, accelerating change will always have its way with you!

Turn change into an opportunity, before the opportunity of change eludes you and passes you by!