Living a life of flux -the way of the future?

There is one certainty........The next decade or two will be defined more by fluidity than by any new, settled paradigm; if there is a pattern to all this, it is that there is no pattern. The most valuable insight is that we are, in a critical sense, in a time of chaos.

For some time I have I have felt and been trying to articulate that the world has changed and how we deliver change must change too. Too many "changes" I know, but I hope you got the meaning.



I have blogged before about the epiphany I had regarding John Kotter's approach to transformational change and that is that it needs to run in a new organisation structure. That is not the traditional "industrial" hierarchy that has been designed and indeed has delivered efficiency, but struggles with having sufficient agility and flux when faced with the rates of change we see today; ever increasing rates by the way.



More recently I have seen two other articles that link with this. The first was here and was another "Seven" article, this time about the habits of unsuccessful executives. It all resonated with me, but especially Habit #7: They stubbornly rely on what worked for them in the past. This includes the old organisation structures and ways of working.



The last piece was an article about Generation Flux. It is a long article, but worth a read. It's examples relate more to media etc, but includes the likes of GE. It argues that we need to be continually building new skills, that life is and wille ambiguous and that the old ways of doing business and i include change in that, won't work. The evidence of this last point is all around us.



I believe that it applies to pretty much all walks of life, just that some may not realise it yet, or if they do they don't want to acknowledge it. It means that as individuals we need to embrace ambiguity and non-linear life paths. It is about mindset and readiness to change and this will threaten and not suit many who find comfort in certainty and rigid structure.



I was taken by a few quotes that I will include here, but I do encourage you to read this fully, I think that understanding and leveraging Generation Flux is the key to future success. The opening quote comes from the article as does this one,

Most big organizations are good at solving clear but complicated problems. They're absolutely horrible at solving ambiguous problems--when you don't know what you don't know. Faced with ambiguity, their gears grind to a halt.

And this one

If you're not changing, you're giving others a chance to catch up.

As I said I commend a full read of this latter article if nothing else. The world has changed and will continue to do so. The challenge is to ride the wave and be part of creating the new rather than be washed away with the old.