When change is irrelevant

At a recent webinar where we were discussing how to manage change for the future, we explored how change comes in different flavors. One of the features of change is its pace. We can have incremental change, things that change slowly over time, like tectonic shifts or like your waistline. Or we can have exponential change where things are changing radically and rapidly and everything is different from the way it was before. These are the landslides or the game changers. But in between those changes, we need to be able to tease out, to distill the essence of what that change is about. That is the real issue that we're discussing. We cannot talk about change in any broad principles and get any meaningful information. We need to dig a little deeper to be really clear about the issue and the intention. As an example, the delegates came up with the interesting conversation of the evolution of the typewriter. Over the years, the old-fashioned communication device has changed and improved and become more sophisticated and efficient. Do you remember this old device? The electric typewriter, then the word processor. The typewriter improved all the way to the keyboards that we have today on our computers and our smartphones. While the concept of the typewriter improved incrementally over time, those changes were based on an old-fashioned restriction. We use a QWERTY keyboard because original typewriters were designed to slow down, intentionally slow down very efficient typists to prevent the metal keys from getting stuck when they were typing too quickly. But we don't need that old-fashioned restriction anymore. We have incrementally improved on an obsolete problem. More radical changes to the keyboard are different designs such as the Dvorak keyboard, ergonomic designs, even holographic interfaces, but all of these are still improvements on the old-fashioned concept of typing. If we understand what the essence of texting and typing is about, we understand it to be communication. We're either communicating with others or with computers in order to share or to retrieve information. In that case, exponential game-changing developments in this field include voice-to-text, smart speakers, and artificial intelligence interfaces that can take our spoken words and generate the kind of communication we require, very often on an alternative platform. The evolution of the typewriter and the introduction of voice-activated commands are examples of change or innovation that can either be incremental or exponential, but throughout, communication is the essence. Make sure in your conversations about change and about the future, when seeking out innovation or making improvements, that you aren't investing time and effort into improving something that should be abolished. Wasting time improving obsolete systems or skills will accelerate your decline into irrelevance. Taking the courageous step to make an exponential change may be what is required to keep you relevant, to keep you in business, or to help you to thrive. If you'd like more conversations like this, join us at the Futures Alchemy Collaborative on Facebook or at a regular webinar. I'm Charlotte Kemp, your Futures Alchemist.