What’s Changing about Change?
Change! It’s a buzzword! Why all the hubbub?
Change means “to make or become different.”[1] Change is simply a part of life. However ~ in today’s globally interconnected world ~ something is changing about change. The very nature of change itself (ie, its speed, scale and impact) seems to be changing.
To help leaders find their bearings on the sea of change, it’s helpful to be aware of some of the salient features about change today. One of the first aspects I draw leaders attention to is the distinction between EXTERNAL and INTERNAL change.
External Change
By external change, I mean what is happening around us, particularly the changes humans have set in motion in our environment (technologically, ecologically, socially, etc). Here’s what is most important to understand about external change: There has been a shift in pattern. External change is now accelerating at a different rate than in the past.
This is so important for us to wrap our heads around, so here it is again:
External change is now accelerating at a different rate than in the past!!!
The “back-of-the-napkin” sketch below is an attempt to illustrate the acceleration of change throughout human history. In the past, external change followed a LINEAR pattern (1,2,3,4,5,6…). However, recently the acceleration of change has shifted into a DOUBLING pattern (1,2,4,8,16,32…). This doubling pattern is also referred to as “EXPONENTIAL.”
The Challenge of Exponential Change
External change is now accelerating at a different rate than in the past. External change has shifted from LINEAR to EXPONENTIAL (a doubling pattern). This shift is very challenging for two reasons:
Exponential/Doubling Pattern is tricky to work with
The first reason the doubling pattern is challenging to work with is because (a)it’s not a pattern humans are used to working with it, and (b)the pattern itself is challenging to work with, as follows a “deceptive then explosive” curve.
I don’t know about you but I had little familiarity with this doubling pattern aside from the brain game question, “Would You take 1 million dollars now or 1 penny that multiplied every day for 30 days?” It highlights the deceptive aspect of this pattern (the first 27 days of doubling, and you’d still have less than $1 million) as well as the explosive part (in the last 3 days of doubling you exceed $1 million and wind up with an amount 5X the $1million)!
“Unlike linear growth, which results from repeatedly adding a constant, exponential growth is the repeated multiplication of a constant. This is why linear growth produces a stable straight line over time, but exponential growth skyrockets.” Berman, Dorrier, and Hill, “How to Think Exponentially and Better Predict the Future” (a great resource to learn more! Lots of helpful illustrations and examples!)
Less Time to Adapt to Change
The second reason why exponential change is so challenging is because with the increasing rapidity of change, we have less time and space to adapt (evolve, develop, learn, change)!
“Change has always been accelerating…but until recently [it] has been slow enough to enable people to adapt.” ~Russel Ackoff, Ackoff’s Best
Space for adapting ~ for being changed by change ~ is an important concept to track! Why?
“Companies and governments are going out of business every day because they have failed to adapt, or because they adapted too slowly.” ~Russel Ackoff, Ackoff’s Best
“Those who survive are the ones who most accurately perceive their environment and successfully adapt to it.” ~Leon Megginson, as quoted in “The evolution of a misquotation” from The Darwin Correspondence Project.
Dee Hock, founder of Visa, referred to this space for adapting as “float” (a term from banking which makes reference to the time between when a check is written and when it completes its journey through the banking system). Hock suggests that the “endless compression of float ~ whether of money, information, technology or for that matter anything else ~ can be described as the disappearance of ‘change’ float, meaning the whittling away of time between what was and what is to be, between past and future. (Hock, 2000)
[Check out this 3 minute video featuring the words of Dee Hock (founder of Visa) to learn more about this acceleration of change and “compression of time and events”/space to adapt.]
Change Fatigue: The Elephant in the Room
Let’s face it: The majority of us are exhausted and overwhelmed by change! The past few years have been challenging and many of us feel shell-shocked by all that’s happened.
The hope that we’re almost on the “other side” of the turbulence has been a source of sustenance for many. We’re doing our best to hold it together, all the while wondering, “Is the storm of disruption almost over?”
Ummm…so there’s bad news and some not-so-bad news.
OK, for the bad news: Salim Ismail, an exponential strategist, suggests “we are about 1% (of the way into exponential change). We are literally just starting. MOST OF THE DISRUPTION IS ACTUALLY AHEAD OF US.”[1]
Arghhhhh! (Take a minute to rant if you need to!)
Ok, now the not-so-bad news…We many not be able to change all the change that’s happening around us…BUT we can change our relationship to change. This brings us back to the distinction between external change and internal change.
External & Internal Change: An Ongoing Spiral of Coevolution
To better understand the challenges we are grappling with when dealing with exponential change, it’s helpful to explore the rate of external change in relationship to the rate of internal change of humans (ie, learning, developing, adapting, evolving).
Zooming out for a moment to look at this relationship over the course of human history:
- Humans, like all other creatures, have adapted to life on our planet. Yet over time, humans distinguished ourselves from other species by our ability to solve problems and create innovations.
- As humans evolved, we discovered/learned new things, and as we discovered/learned new things, we evolved. External and internal change have developed together in an ongoing spiral of coevolution.
- Each discovery aided human life, as well as added new levels of complexity to which humanity has needed to adapt. (Think for a moment how the discovery of fire, the wheel, and agriculture required humans ~ as individuals and communities ~ to adapt and be changed by change).
“The Rift”
Zooming in on our current situation: We are at a precarious moment … our internal rate of change has not yet shifted along with external change into an exponential pattern. This means there is a growing discrepancy between the external changes humans have set in motion and our internal capacities to manage them.
“The Rift” is how I refer to this growing mismatch between the world’s complexity and our own.
Indications that you’re experiencing The Rift include the sense of overwhelm ~ the feeling that we are “in over our heads”[2] and that no matter how hard we effort, it seems we’re only “falling further and further behind our times.”[3]
The image above illustrates how ~unless we shift our rate of internal change to an exponential pattern ~ the Rift and its accompanying feeling of overwhelm ~ will grow increasingly intense as time passes.
Therefore, an antidote to The Rift (and the accompanying feeling of overwhelm) is to change our relationship to change by allowing ourselves to be changed by changed.
The Shift: From Robust to Resilient
In the world many of us were raised in, success was associated with the ability to withstand change. (This is why innovation and change initiatives are often met by a strong immune response ~ because “all of our organizations are built to withstand change and withstand risk.”[3]
Systems that survive by withstanding change are referred to as “robust systems”. Systems that survive by being changed are called “resilient”.
“In complexity, we’re going for resilience. We want people, communities & institutions that survive by being changed.” ~Chris Corrigan
Remember, you can insert these other words for “change”: Adapt. Evolve. Develop. Learn!
We want people, communities and institutions that survive by adapting…evolving…developing…learning!
Understanding the context of exponential change demonstrates why I believe learning/developing is the key imperative of our new world.
Works Cited
[1] www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/change
[2] Salim Ismail, Exponential Organizations (This 40min video is definitely worth watching!)
[3] Robert Kegan, In Over Our Heads: The Mental Demands of Modern Life
[4] Donald A. Schön discussed the sense that “we are falling further and further behind our times,” pointing out that, growing in tandem with accelerated change, is increasing complexity of problems, increasing numbers of these complex problems, and increasing amounts of time required to manage these problems (as they morph so quickly, solutions become irrelevant in shorter and shorter amounts of time).
