The World is Changing, Are We?

“Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change.” — Stephen Hawking        

Clearly, times are changing, explosive technological and scientific advances are now?going exponential in ways we can’t predict, and the convergence of which yields a future that looks nothing like our current reality. This change is going to require a human resiliency and adaptability that far exceeds any transformation of our culture to date. Yet, there is a mismatch today between the change in the pace of change and our ability to develop the capacity to adapt, let alone thrive and unlock our human potential. This mismatch is at the center of much of the turmoil roiling politics and society in both developed and developing countries today. It now constitutes probably the most important governance challenge across the globe.?

A recent McKinsey study of more than 3,000 executives across 7 countries for what skills are needed for the next decade to enable us to adapt to the tsunami we can’t yet see but know is coming. What they found, to no surprise, is that demand for advanced technology skills is the number one need for the next decade. But what might surprise you is that the other 24 skills (out of 25) were all social, emotional, and higher cognitive skills such:

• Advanced communication and interpersonal skills
• Greater creativity, originality, and innovative thinking.
• Analytical thinking-can process and interpret complex information easily.
• Active learning and learning strategies.
• Reasoning, problem-solving, and ideation.
• Adaptive leadership with emotional intelligence.
• Systems thinking and evaluation.

It turns out that our future is less about what we know, and more about the capacity we can build for deep work and creativity amongst a frenetic and distracted world. The average performer no longer meets today’s rapidly growing expectations of organizational goals. Organizations are looking for top performers who can thrive in chaos, proactively learn and grow through hardships, and excel no matter how many or how intense the inevitable setbacks they may encounter in their daily routines. Employees today need to not only survive, cope, and recover, but thrive and flourish through the inevitable difficulties and uncertainties that they face – and do so with greater novelty and imagination than their competitors.

Although creativity is frequently associated with original and radical ideas, it also incorporates the capacity to find novel approaches for day-to-day problem-solving, as well as to constructively adapt new ideas and mechanisms so that they positively contribute to oneself and others.? Creativity has become one of the most important sources of sustained competitive advantages for organizations today. In order to survive, adapt, and gain this competitive advantage, organizations need to unleash their employee's innate creative potential and use them as building blocks for organizational innovation, change, and competitiveness.

There is a plethora of research that demonstrates that creativity is a huge competitive advantage, which means the question for the workforce of the future is not how we outcompete our competitors in speed and price, but rather on creativity and innovation. A 2015 research paper titled “Work-related flow, psychological capital, and creativity among employees of software houses” discovered that achieving a flow state is positively correlated with optimal performance in artistic and scientific creativity. Research also shows that higher psychological capital better relates to outcomes of employee performance, job satisfaction, and absenteeism. Earlier empirical evidence further indicates that cognitive and affective involvement in flow is a significant predictor of original and productive output in organizational settings. Similarly, it was found that transient flow states also positively predicted desired organizational activities such as strategic planning, resolving problems, and appraisal, and flow state is positively correlated with positive emotions that promote self-efficacy, resilience, and optimism. All the skills and abilities necessary to thrive in the decade ahead.

Contrast the effects of psychological capital and flow states in an organization. In the now-famous 2017 Gallup Poll study, which sent shockwaves through the workforce, it was revealed that 85% of the workforce is either mildly or significantly disengaged in their work. The ‘9-5’ job is a relic of the past, today the average worker checks their work email shortly after rising in the morning and just before falling asleep at night. This means this thing that 85% of us dislike is spreading over more and more of our lives and having a huge impact on our overall health and happiness.

While we may not know what the future holds for us, the one thing we do know is that business is rapidly evolving and transforming in non-linear ways we can no longer predict. This isn’t a new trend; it has been happening over the past decade. The average lifespan of an S&P 500 company has dropped by over 40 years since the 1950’s – from an average of 61 years to less than 18 years today (McKinsey). And, according to Richard Foster of Yale University, the rate of change is at a faster pace than ever.

It turns out these ‘built to last’ companies were indeed strong and firm, but their strength led them to focus on a presumed predictable future and this became their Achilles heel. These companies often took literally the often-misquoted aspect of Charles Darwin’s “survival of the fittest”. What they failed to hear was the fullness of his eloquence. “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is most adaptable to change”. Given that we now live on a hyper-conscious planet, the adaptability is not at the individual level, but at the species.

A defining condition of being human is that we have to understand the meaning of our experiences in order to adapt and change. We must learn to make our own interpretations rather than act on the purposes, beliefs, judgments, and feelings of others. Transformative learning is the process of effecting change in a frame of reference and learning to develop autonomous thinking. As futurist and author Alvin Toffler once said, “The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who?cannot learn,?unlearn, and?relearn”. And if humans aren’t able to change, at least not anywhere near the pace needed for the future we are becoming initiated into, then for good or bad this also means that current established organizations will also have a hard time keeping pace. Our biggest companies and government agencies were designed in a century that had a different purpose - one of safety and stability, ‘built to last’, ‘made of steel’.? They weren’t designed to be flexible and adaptive in the face of radical change and disruption.

More specifically, rather than seeing our current systems of work as never changing, how can we embrace the needs of a global, hybrid workforce? How do we create self-organizing, naturally self-maintaining, highly adaptive regenerative forms of capitalism that produce lasting social and economic vitality for global civilization as a whole? And as robots, artificial intelligence, autonomous cars, biotechnology, and more come mainstream, how do we create the capacity to unlock human potential in the work we do, ensuring a healthy, whole community that can be resilient and not only able to sustain the changing tides around us, but ride the swell to thrive with innovation and creative endeavors?

The conundrum of change, particularly in the realm of business, is underscored by its inherent difficulty. As we navigate this uncharted terrain, the amalgamation of ancient wisdom with cutting-edge innovation serves as a beacon, guiding us toward a future where adaptability, creativity, and resilience are not just valued - but essential for survival and prosperity.

The world is changing, are we?