Change is happening really fast, and I don’t think people really-really appreciating it much as to actually stop and think about it.
Hyper adaption is required but can people identify it or actually adapt to it in time - or else you can be forgotten or be old and disparate in a society which has accepted a change as the norm and moved on?
You are a team player whether you like it or not: societies are groups and they function with commonalities in mind - those commonalities could be changes recently introduced and now accepted. They are increasingly computer and information related, like ways of interacting with services in the community or the community itself.
A warning to businesses:
Many businesses now no longer work in one way or continue that way indefinitely – they need to adapt to new ways of doing business if they are doing to survive – this is just like people need to adapt to societal changes, only these changes have influenced business and how they operate. They can affect your bottom line.
A really good question is how will companies identify the need to change and adapt appropriately and more importantly in a timely way as to cope with the effects of not doing so timely and effectively? Often I think companies don’t see change, and they are caught out because they don’t have a mechanism that identifies it – or more bluntly they don’t know or think change last long and that it will go away and revert back to how it was before.
Change can be perhaps seen as one of the most dangerous aspects in this regard to companies and businesses who cannot see the implications of dealing with changes, which are bound to occur and now having to spend money cleaning up their failures in dealing with changes they couldn’t see coming. Identifying change and planning for change is important as is it in software development re: agile methodologies which embraces change an inevitable.
Where does change come from? Everywhere, but its more concerning for businesses who now use computers and technology more than ever because change occurs often in computing and information. You need to swim if you want to live in water.
Computers and technology instigate change – they are useful and they are dangerous in the way mentioned above – perhaps its why change management is a study and discipline in large organisations but perhaps isn't in enough smaller organisations. An interesting question is whether the size of the company predisposes you to miss signs of change?
Changes are a full-time job and quite rightly so. The results of changes can be implicitly disastrous. A misconception is that change is temporary or that you have enough time to deal with it or that it will go away. Change management’s main task surely is being aware of this and being on the offensive and not the defensive regarding it.
Staying on track, abreast and having full awareness is difficult but it must be done or aimed to be done. More information, more change means more potential for missing key signs.
Communication and the internet have made things more global and there are more things to consider now re: software development – laws, localization, currency etc…
So don’t shoot yourself in the foot by not thinking about what software actually is and how it actually can influence you, your company and the society you live in. It’s a dangerous miracle.