This is 2nd installment of a series on change management which can be followed by the hashtag #TIEchange on the 4 top Social Media platforms (twitter, LinkedIn, facebook, google+).
The first installment provided an overview of what to expect and can be read here.
Everyone Is Experiencing ‘It’…
some are going for the ride it offers, knowing what’s going to happen
others are not sure why they are going for the ride it offers but know it’s better than being left behind
some aren’t ‘jumping aboard it’ until they can measure it, define it, know it and understand it
and the last group has given up on it altogether and are focused on anything else…
‘It’ is the rate of change going on everywhere and everything but more so with information technology than anything else. The logarithmic change of technology is more like a speed boat than a canoe lately. And the wake of this ‘speed boat’ is upsetting a lot who are not prepared — and lately even those who are prepared.
Who or What is Driving This Experience?
So who’s piloting this boat? Well… Our desires!
our desires for new and faster things
our desires to be connected yet independent
our desires to be liberated and free yet servants
our desires to be on vacation yet connected (shame on you if you are!)
our desires to collaborate yet be unique
our desires for the fast exchange of ideas and thoughts yet slow enough to discern (or hopefully)
our desires to have information readily available for fun, work, research, relaxation, entertainment, leisure reading, whatever we desire at the moment…
How Big Is All This?
How big is this desire? The internet is doubling in size every 60 hours, every 2-1/2 days. A week of the Wall Street Journal has more information in it in one week than our earlier family would know in a lifetime… I’m talking grandparents as well as great grandparents.
Our desires are the pilot — if not for desires, we’d be relaxing, watching football and having beer… Yet even THAT is a desire, yes?
With All This Happening, How Do We Make An Immediate Affect on Our Work?
If our desires are the pilot, then what is navigating us through all this? Well, that would be what navigates any desire: our decisions — and decisions provide direction, do they not?
What makes one decision better than the other is deciphering differences… In other words, discernment is the key to navigating all this… Or pilot wheel for those who like to be technically correct…
If unfamiliar, discernment is not only the ability to decipher differences, it is the ability to do so at several levels simultaneously… A more formal word — wisdom…
Discernment is not taught in any schools, nor is it offered online… It is within each of us whether we reach for it, or not… Reaching is the only way it grows and it dies quickly once we stop reaching for it. And it can be regrown if it has been abandoned… It just is and is just there, free for the asking…
We all know very wise 7 year old children yet very foolish 70 year old men (or women — foolishness is not biased!), yet we also know very wise 70 year old people… So age is not a criteria…
Knowledge is Power… But…
Neither is knowledge — don’t get me wrong, knowledge is power, yes, yet power needs fuel. Knowledge doesn’t feed upon itself otherwise why would we have colleges? Universities? Continuing education? Certifications that need to be renewed?
We all have met or have witnessed an extremely knowledgeable person that left us wondering how anyone so smart be so stupid, yes? And almost every time what was lacking? Discernment… They couldn’t discern between two simple principles, facts, realities, or even what many would call common sense…
Without discernment, even the most knowledgeable person looks more ‘stupider’ than any ignorant… There is hardly a person that has not witnessed this with any intellect we know.
With the advent of man drawing pictures, before he created an alphabet, we can see the evidence of discernment, and even as older writings and drawings are found than those already discovered, discernment is already embedded in the images or content…
So what happened to learning discernment? Why are most of us not learning any of this — yet recognizing it when we see it? Recognizing it when we experience it?
Our Thinking Process Needs to Change With Today’s Changes
Think of your education — how you learned as a child, how you learned as an adult… What was — and still is — the most prevalent way we are taught to learn?
Are we not instructed what to think? What to feel? What to see? What to hear?
They only thing we had to determine for ourselves is how something tastes and how something smells… When all 5 of our senses are involved in learning — not just 2 — we tend to think how than what…
When we learn how things are through our senses, we learn how to discern… As a result of our education system in nearly any country, the only discernment most of us have today is our how something smells or tastes…
OK, so what does all this have to do with anything concerning the rate of change?
Well if the only discernment most of us have is in knowing if something will taste good or not from its aroma… Then how do we discern if an idea, principle, character, of process is good unless we are being told that it is (that is, being told what to think, do, say, etc)…
There is also a time element to all this — when we are being told what to think, someone has to put it all together for us — by providing their own interpretation…
When we are thinking how something is, how it works, how it can be resolved we are preparing ourselves for our own interpretation…
We are also doing something that otherwise wouldn’t happen — we will make mistakes… And everyone learns from mistakes, their own as well as those of others…
Thomas Edison was asked by a news reporter why did it take 5000 attempts to finally produce a light bulb, and shouldn’t that be considered a failure and more of luck than an invention… He replied, “I discovered 5000 ways of how to not make a light bulb as well as the 1 that works!”
Albert Einstein noted that we cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used to create them — Einstein knew how to think, in spite of being told what to think… So didn’t Edison…
The underlying theme is both men were highly innovative as well as inventive… They were not boxed in, hampered, by what they had to think…
Are you thinking, “Not everyone can be an Edison”? “… an Einstein”? Stop right there and ask yourself…
Are you listening to what you were told?
Or are you looking at how they learned?
More next week when we’ll look more at shunning what to think and learn how to think as well as why everything is changing so quickly, especially technology…
A quick poll as well:
What are YOUR thoughts on why everything is changing so quickly?
Provide your thoughts in the comments below (you may respond in English or Portuguese)…
[Crédito da Imagem: Work Results – ShutterStock]