At any given time, there are many s-curves going on at once. Some are just beginning to crawl, others speeding up and still others slowing down. Pointing out the ones that are speeding up and ignoring everything else that’s going on may be exciting, but it’s not the way to get the best results.
It’s no accident that VUCA is a military term. The ever-present mantra that we are living in a time of volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity makes corporate executives feel like swashbuckling heroes. The truth is that there is very little evidence that is the case and a veritable mountain to the contrary.
There is also evidence that all the hype around change is doing real damage. Leaders conjure up dramatic images of “burning platforms” to justify launching ambitious initiatives, which rarely succeed. These failures then are given as confirmation for how dire the need for change really is and more initiatives are launched with similar results.
That is the change gospel. Transformation has, all too often, become an end in itself rather than a means to an end. We end up pivoting so much that we end up right where we started. The problem with cheerleading change is that it puts the cart before the horse. People don’t embrace change because you came up with a fancy slogan, they adopt what they find meaningful, that creates genuine value to their lives and their work.
We need to have more reverence for the mundane and ordinary. When you look at previous eras in which more genuine transformation took place and far more economic value was produced, there was much less talk about disruption and much more focus on improving the human condition.
The truth is that we’re not really disrupting industries anymore as much as we are disrupting ourselves and fairy tales and living in a VUCA era will not change those basic facts. We need to think less about disruption and more about tackling grand challenges that will impact the world in significant ways. Innovation should serve people, not the other way around.
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