Outrun Change

We need to learn quickly to keep up with the massive change around us so we don't get run over. We need to outrun change.

Archive for the tag “dealing with change”

12 Jun 2013

“The best way to predict the future is to create it”

Philosiblog expands that idea in a post of the same name.

Using the analogy of riding a river shows we have a major role to play in our future. We can even create our future.

Think of two people in a river. One is just floating on a raft, unable to predict what is coming, because they aren’t looking around and aren’t doing anything to move or steer. The other person is in a kayak, looking for the path they want, and actively steering and moving themselves to that point. Read more…

Posted in Pondering and tagged , | Leave a Comment
15 May 2013
3 Comments

With cell phone cameras everywhere, here is one proposal for how to balance freedom to record and the right to privacy

John Bredehoft ponders Striking the balance between freedom and privacy, and the other Empoprise rule

With almost everyone having a cell phone that can record video and audio, we need to work through the issue of balancing privacy right to *not* be recorded and the freedom to record things of interest.

As a society, we haven’t come to terms with that issue.

John has a suggestion: Read more…

Posted in Technology and tagged ,
26 Apr 2013

The crazy changing economy in one sentence

In a footnote to his post In Search of Resilience, Seth Godin says:

Henry Mason describes a friend who said, “My dad had one job his whole life, I’ll have seven, and my kids will have seven jobs at the same time.”

Posted in Change around us and tagged | Leave a Comment
08 Jan 2013

Who inherits your digital music, books, and movies? Who controls your social media after you die?

Can you give your digital books or movies to your heirs? Can your family gain access to your social media sites after your death to preserve your memories and content?

Our legal system hasn’t quite dealt with those questions. At the moment, the answers to those questions are probably no.

Read more…

Posted in Change around us, Technology and tagged , | Leave a Comment
24 Nov 2012

Go beyond the optimism or pessimism – look at the complexity

On my other blog, Nonprofit Update, I have a post describing an essay that talks about the wild swings between optimism and pessimism of our perceptions about what is taking place in Africa.  The underlying circumstances can feed either optimism or pessimism as you choose.

If we want to understand, we need to go beyond our mood swings and learn of the complexity that exists.

Why mention that post on this blog? Because it addresses at a deep level how we can deal with the change surrounding us.  We need to go beyond our emotions and look at the underlying complexity.

Why post it on that blog? Because the main focus is an encouragement to address the unseen complexity in order to create change in the place where an NPO is working.

Check out It’s complicated, Africa version.

Posted in Change around us and tagged | Leave a Comment
12 Sep 2012
2 Comments

Now massive change is starting to undercut the effectiveness of blogging

We need to work really hard to stay ahead of the massive change taking place. That’s the concept of this blog. Mark Schaefer points out that the rising use of mobile phones is reducing some of the effective parts of blogging.

Wow! Yet more change. This time affects bloggers, who otherwise are fairly well advanced on the coping-with-change curve.

In Five ways the mobile revolution impacts your blog, he explains an increasing number of people use the smart phone as primary access to the ‘net. That small screen drops out a lot of information that appears on a full-screen.

Read more…

Posted in Adapting to change, Change around us and tagged
31 Jul 2012

5 internal obstacles that block social media progress

What can get in the way of developing a social media platform in your organization?

The Social Media Minefield: Five factors blocking your success is a great post by Mark Schaefer describing five obstacles.

The takeaway is you need to figure out the obstacles in your organization to developing a social media platform. Then you can figure out a plan to remove them.

He sees five very common obstacles routinely encountered in organizations: Read more…

Posted in Adapting to change, Change around us and tagged , , | Leave a Comment
17 Jul 2012

What 30 years of change looks like

Change in technology, the all-white old-boys network, and turnaround time are just a few of the things Mark Schaefer has seen in the 30 years since he started his business career. He discusses the changes in his post, 30 years of business change in one blog post.

One of the changes I’ve benefited from is the growth in personal opportunity. The entry cost to start anything new has dropped dramatically.

In my case, the cost of starting a new accounting firm is minimal.

Read more…

Posted in Change in the past and tagged , | Leave a Comment
13 Jun 2012

Sometimes creative destruction does you in, sometimes it is political turmoil far away, and sometimes it is just destruction

A while back my wife and I vacationed in San Diego. I learned a lot of new things in Old Town. That is a state park where many buildings have been renovated to reflect life as it was from 1810 through 1870.

I read a delightful, short history of Old Town titled San Diego’s Beginnings.

One of many fascinating things is the long list of outside pressures that forced massive change on the residents of Old Town.

Read more…

Posted in Adapting to change, Change in the past, Economics and tagged , | Leave a Comment
24 Apr 2012
1 Comment

The more things change, the more they stay the same as 2,442 years ago

Since I am even less trendy than John Bredehoft, I wasn’t aware of this funny line that is making the rounds until he called attention to it in his post, 430 BC and 2012 AD – remarkable parallels, or coincidence?

Greece is collapsing,

Iranians are getting aggressive

& Rome is in disarray.

Welcome back to 430 BC!

Read more…

Posted in Change in the past, Pondering and tagged
14 Mar 2012

Grappling with change – another sector talks about their environment

J., an anonymous blogger at AidSpeak, has a post talking through the tensions of military people taking on humanitarian work, which puts them into the place where civilian aid workers have been for a long time – Humanitarian Space (the final frontier).

Having uniformed, armed soldiers doing the same thing that aid workers do blurs the distinction between those whose primary job is building things up (aid workers) and those whose primary job is blowing things up (soldiers).

That creates confusion for everyone involved especially those on the receiving end of humanitarian aid who watched things get blown up.

J.’s post is dealing with the realization that various militaries probably won’t be dropping their humanitarian aid work anytime soon. That means it will be important for the aid community to figure out how to work with and deal with the military community.

Read more…

Posted in Change around us, Pondering and tagged , | Leave a Comment

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