That is the opener of a superb post from Tom Hood, CEO of Maryland Association of CPAs.
By the way, his comments may be tailored to an audience of CPAs, but everything he says applies across the board to anyone in business, the nonprofit world, and even government.
If you want a curriculum of things to read and watch so you can get started on dealing with the radical change in the work world, check out his post Are you future ready? And other reflections & resources from the CCH User Conference
Lots of things to learn there, including a slide show of Mr. Hood’s presentation at the conference: Leadership in the Participatory Economy.
No matter what organization you are in or what level you work at, you will gain lots of insight with every moment you spend reading the slides.
My absolute favorite idea from everything I’ve seen at MACPA is mentioned in that slide:
To keep pace in your industry, let alone Excel as a leader, requires your rate of learning to be greater than, or equal to, the rate of change.
This is expressed by Tom Hood in a formula:
L>C
I think that is a cool formula. Captures in three characters everything that is going on today. There is radical change. We need to be learning and growing more than the change around us. If we don’t, we will get overwhelmed.
The theme of his presentation is that the very nature of leadership is changing:
From: Command & Control
To: Connect & Collaborate
This is driven by many factors, none of which you or I can stop. We ignore these changes at our peril.
Another great link in the post is to the “Insights to Go” worksheet, which is a great note taking device for the next time you go to a class or listen to a presentation. It could help you listen for the three things you learned that you want to share, three things that can have the biggest impact on changing your organization, books/people/ideas you need to check out, and challenges & opportunities for you or your firm. This was developed as a part of the AICPA Horizons 2025 project.
Lots of great stuff gathered in one post. You gotta’ check it out.