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Be good, or be gone. Welcome to the new normal.
THE WORLD IS TOPSY TURVY.
Said Mark Wahlberg, in a bold wake up call to the world. Look it up, great speech. And he’s spot on.
I’ll start with the Bottom line: This radical change is not episodic. It’s a default. We are all trying to grasp and flow through the greatest seismic change since the industrial revolution. Everything changes, exponentially.
If you’re not spending time understanding what current era is, what futures you are facing and what it means to your organization, you are effectively putting yourself in a fragile position of becoming obsolete, or even extinction. Doing nothing is not an option any more. My sincere (and obvious) advice; Don’t get stuck in the mud with the unprepared.
TO SURVIVE IN THESE NEW ECOSYSTEMS, ORGANIZATIONS, PEOPLE, BUSINESSES AND BRANDS MUST BECOME FUTURE-READY.
The global changes in this new radical era can be characterized by their seeming intractability. cultural, social, technological and environmental challenges are interwoven into a complex and persistent web of issues. Preparing for them will require suited competencies, and an orchestrated, highly coordinated effort.
Today’s super-fast paced society and re-shuffled globalization requires a wider spectrum view, strategic, new R&D model, and radical creative techniques that can offer multiple perspectives, explorative and experimental analysis tools, in order to enrich an organization’s knowledge of the future and enable more lucid way to be ready for multiple scenarios.
Awaken organizations are the ones who are Hyper-adaptive and Value-sensitive to their environments.
Dreamable realities are now realizable dreams.
Every day, we see how science fiction is actually becoming science fact. Business as usual is dead. Exponential change is the natural flow. We are being pushed to shift to a truly new era, to a Post-normal world.
One of the most important philosophers in history, in my opinion the most profound one, Martin Heidegger, characterizes this phenomenological status of all entities in life as having been “thrown into the world”, that “we are thrown into the future”. “safe” Stagnation will lead you to non-existence, if I may.
All that said, most important institutions are still running on an operating system that was configured over 100 years ago for a world already in extinction. In our radical VUCA world, there are unprecedented tectonic shifts that demand a fundamentally new mindset of how organizations should be designed to adapt to these radical realities.
So what is this VUCA thing anyway?
The acronym VUCA was first coined by the U.S. military in the late 1990s, It has since been adopted as a fundamental strategic descriptor of this radical era by organizations worldwide.
Here is a short description about VUCA:
V = volatility: the nature and dynamics of change and the nature and speed of change forces and change catalysts
U = uncertainty: the lack of predictability, the prospect for surprise and awareness and understanding of issues and events
C = complexity: the multiplicity of forces, confounding issues and the chaos and confusion that surround an organization
A = ambiguity: the haziness of reality, the potential for misreading situations and mixed meanings causing confusion between causes and their effects
WE ARE LIVING THROUGH SEISMIC CHANGE GREATER THAN THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION. FEW CRITICAL POINTS TO CONSIDER:
ONE. We is better than Me. Bottom-up is the new Top-down, Organizations are getting flatter, as People, rightfully so, are back on being the most important asset. Talents creates futures. Anything that can be digitized or automated, will be — and anything that cannot be digitized or automated will become extremely valuable. Organizations are Human-made.
TWO. New Normal. We need to embrace the fact that our lives, our work, our organizations, will never be the same again. Be good, or be gone.
THREE. We are living in the most chaotic, radical, and super creative times. Time to embrace abundance thinking, and get rid of scarcity approach that blocks your creativity and flux of opportunities rising now in the new world.
FOUR. Daily, We’re witnessing dazzling cultural and economic shifts offering us an abundance of new exciting opportunities for organizations. All organizations are being challenged, disrupted, and transformed by the extra-rapid cycles of changes in the VUCA world.
FIVE. Remember: “The average half-life of a business competency has dropped from 30 years in 1984 to 5 years today.”
“89% of the Fortune 500 companies from 1955 are not on the list today.”
“In the next 10 years, 40% of all S&P 500 companies will disappear from this list” (‘Exponential orgs’, Yuri Van Geest & Salim Ismail)
SIX. Progressive-adaptive organizations of the new Post-Industrial Work VUCA world are crafted in a new way of working that is designed to flow with uncertainty rather than predictability.
SEVEN. The consensus is that we are living in a world in which change at warp speed is affecting more people than ever before. Leaders need new ways to deal with these highly challenging circumstances.
IT’S A NEW PLAYGROUND. AND THE RULES HAVE CHANGED. THE NEXT RULES ARE BEING FORMED NOW.
Oops. Shift happens..and it happens as you read it now. In this New Post Normal era we can see a shift from the classical world of problems, characterized with demand speed, over-quantitative analysis, and high effort of trying to eliminate uncertainty to solve — to a world of dilemmas, ‘Wicked problems’ which demand high patience, multiple views of sense-making, and embracing an engagement of uncertainty. and chaos.
‘We are OVERWHELMED BY OUR SCALE, if we are a Fortune 500 company, or we are OVERWHELMED BY OUR SCALING, if we are Slack, or Zenefits, or one of the new exponential growth startup phenomenons”
Aaron Dignan, Responsive org movement.
IS IT EVOLUTION OR A REVOLUTION?
It doesn’t matter, really. Everything changes as we speak.
We are at an inflection point: it’s time to stop trying to add patches to an old model. Instead, embrace the new world of work.
Customers’ mind-set: Frugality & Frustration
Customers demand: Reciprocity & Openness
Brands’ reality: Fragility & Exponentiality
Companies DNA: Agility & Collaboration
Organizational code: Creativity & Empathy
Welcome to the “New normal”
Organizations in FLOW start off by embracing the fact that we are in an environment that’s going to keep changing, in an exponential pace and our planning is going to keep changing obviously .
Waking up to rhythm: the yet we’re going to develop and nurture an adaptive culture that’s constantly sensing and iterating upon the structure and rhythm of our organization so that we remain fully awaken, relevant and purposeful toward our mission in this world.
Access and adaptability are more important than innovation. It’s about the People that lead your company to new heights by flexible & adaptive culture and constant competence sharpening. Human Creativity precedes Innovation and disruption.
Moonshots are necessary. Your desired ‘Disruption’ and ‘exponential growth’ relies more on organizational capabilities than on technological innovation.
TEAMING What are you actually doing about your organizational and team Future-readiness? what new structures, skills, tools, and learnings should you embrace?
STRUCTURE How your organization should look, act, and behave like to meet the new world standards?
CULTURE How do you enable a vibrant, creative, and purposeful culture that flows with the VUCA world tempo?
CREATIVE DISTRIBUTION What tools, platforms, and training methods are you embedding in your organization to create, streamline, collect and utilize all the insights, ideas, and prototypes, creative energy that pave the path to an exciting and successful future?
TANGIBLE FUTURES In a correct state of constant preparation for the future as we all have to be — how do you develop the optional routes, prototypes, and practical knowledge to reveal possible, preferred and plausible futures?
ARE YOU FUTURE READY?
BORN. Futurising organizations.
BORN is a Futures R&D consultancy for the New Normal.
bornlabs.strikingly.com
