Welcome to the Era of Transition!

Seven years ago, my life was disrupted by a series of unprecedented and unimaginable events. I was riding the highs of my S-Curve, the crest of the wave, living my dream life in Los Angeles. Within months, that changed, and everything I knew about life changed. I was disrupted by an FBI investigation that seemingly overnight changed everything about my life. (Thankfully, now the subject of a keynote rather than my reality.) All of us, now know what this feels like.

What I learned through this experience was that, as human beings, we are well equipped to deal with a crisis. We can all conjure up the necessary resilience to get through when we need to. The current pandemic has reinforced this as individuals and businesses have overcome tremendous obstacles during this time.

However, I discovered through my experience that getting through the crisis was easier than the transition I needed to make on the other side of the crisis. The transition required a greater level of focus over a more extended period, a willingness to re-examine everything and to shift into a process of continuous change and innovation.

As we move into 2022, the experts are starting to agree we are now at the tail of the pandemic.

I believe we are no longer in an era of disruption but have entered a new era; The era of transition. This new era is significant because things that worked for us during the last two decades since 2000 will not work anymore. We will need a radical shift in our capabilities to keep pace with the change required.

Going through transition is much more difficult than going through disruption, coming from experience. I say this because the transition period is a much longer process.

Transition is about continuous change, sitting comfortably with ambiguity and requires a complete shift in the perception of how we view the world and a willingness to do so.

Interestingly, more disruption occurs during periods of transition than during periods of crisis.

I believe we are entering a challenging transition, and COVID has been the event to prepare us for what is to come.

COVID has forced us to deal with continuous disruption, change, ambiguity and discomfort. It has shifted our foundation to create a new normal.

The new normal we are seeing take shape out of the pandemic is one of accelerating what is important to us. Social and environmental justice and new consumer and employee behaviour. All shaped over the last 12-18 months, as we have dealt with the consequences of this current generations equivalent of a world war.

The biggest challenge leaders will face during this time is building capabilities within their people to absorb and adapt to change and transition quickly and continuously.

Here are the three biggest areas; I believe that leaders need to focus on coming out of the pandemic as they will have the biggest impact on industry and workforce behaviour.

1.????A Fundamental Change in Consumer Behaviour

As a result of the pandemic, consumer behaviour has made a tremendous evolutionary shift. Before the pandemic, consumers became more socially minded and educated, which created significant tension. However, on the other side of the pandemic, consumers now want more. They want hyper-personalised experiences, convenience and sustainability.

Technology can deliver all three of these things. As AI continues to improve, the consumer demand for hyper-personalised experiences will continue, so will our willingness to prefer dealing with interfaces that can deliver that experience without questioning us.

Consumers will seek out sustainable products over unsustainable products and require a huge amount of maintenance.

Here are two examples of industries I believe will need to act quickly as the end of the runway will be on them quicker than they anticipate.

The building industry is in for a huge shakeup. Unfortunately for many building product companies, they are riding the peak of an S Curve right now and believe their success will continue, so rather than start looking for a new S Curve to jump to, they are protecting the core.

Insurance will also go through a tremendous transition due to this hyper-personalised consumer behaviour trend. New emerging players in the Insurance sector are using AI to great effect in personalising insurance with evolving algorithms and insurance packaging for the individual consumer. These emerging insurers do not have to overcome decades of inertia that traditional insurance organisations have to overcome to bring these products to market.

2.????A focus on Social and Environmental Justice

We are now seeing a radical change in social and environmental justice attitudes. People are protesting more often. Millennials are demanding to be heard on issues from limiting freedoms, greenhouse gas reduction, economic and gender equity.

Millennials are also teaching their children to have an even louder voice around these issues. Black Lives Matter Rallies, High School Students taking the streets as a show of solidarity around environmental justice. Freedom Rallies and Rallies focused on righting the wrongs of the past (such as the Invasion Day Rallies in Australia) are going to become more and more frequent with greater and greater numbers.

This is a sign of a society in transition, which is starting to demand a move away from centralised control toward decentralised autonomous control.

3.????A foundational change of what's important in our lives

One of the biggest changes we have seen due to the pandemic is a huge shift in what is important in our lives.

The great resignation, the four-day work week and decentralised autonomous enterprises are the beginning of a fundamental shift in the way we work. People want to be well paid but well paid for meaningful work that they can do from anywhere.

Deloitte has been an early mover in this transition, announcing their work from anywhere in the world policy. Atlassian has recently announced a similar policy. It will be interesting to see how these organisations make that transition.

This shift in the foundation of our work lives is yet another sign of a significant transition we are going through as a society as our fundamental social fabric shifts.

Over the next month or two, I will start exploring some strategies leaders can use to solve this problem and build new capabilities that can ensure success when going through a transition. A body of work I am calling "Radical Innovation."

I look forward to sharing this with you all as we embark on a huge transitionary journey over the next decade or two.