As Clayton Christensen reiterated throughout his work, capable managers do not become incapable overnight; they act in what they believe is in the best interests of the organisation they serve. For the executives in Western Union, there was simply no way they could have anticipated that the telephone would ever get good enough to be a competitive threat. As the great innovator Buckminster Fuller said, “There is nothing in the caterpillar that tells you it will be a butterfly.”
How do you maintain the message of your company vision across generations?
“Many of us are living a very narrow life; we have self-inflicted blinkers on. Widen your view, widen your mind, widen your life.” — Marcus Aurelius
The information we absorb dramatically impacts how we perceive the world.
When you change your perspective of time and see it as non-linear, it helps you realise that a step backwards is a natural part of renewal. When you perceive time as non-linear, it enables you to reinvent, renew and regenerate safely in the knowledge that your old bloom and your new bud co-exist, each supporting your magnificent present.
The beginning of a new career is the end of an old one. For anyone struggling with change, remember that Winter always precedes Spring.
An organisation must address people and processes, mental models and business models, what they do and how their people think. Forcing mechanical change is a fool’s errand. There is always a struggle in any change process, but struggle is a precursor to growth.
Just as we can learn functional principles like air flight from birds, we can also learn soft skills like leadership and teamwork.
We are seeing a global gradual introduction of surveillance in schools. This means children will become accustomed to such surveillance. We need to be wary of the water we jump into to avoid the fate of the boiling frog..
You may have heard that hackers succeeded in hacking Elon Musk’s Starlink internet satellite network using a $25 homemade device. Security researchers have revealed how hardware vulnerabilities allow attackers to access the Starlink system and run custom code on the devices. Starlink (a division of Musk’s SpaceX) encourages hackers to attack its system to uncover security vulnerabilities by offering a bug bounty. We can be sure that Musk and co. Companies employ some of the best engineers on the planet to work in Tesla, Space X, Starlink and Neuralink. The fact that they were hacked so easily should worry us.
Many of the earth’s most enduring organisms from ants to bees encourage specialisation. Likewise, the successful bank of the future will incorporate composite specialists into their superorganism rather than trying to compete on all levels. This approach will not only optimise survival for legacy organisations but will create an ecosystem that caters to changing customer demands. This combination of specialism and diversity applies not to only the most successful organisms, but also to the most successful organisations.