- Change is happening at an exponential pace.
Now what does that mean?
Our friends at Singularity University,
the educational think tank in Silicon Valley,
have a very compelling way of explaining it.
Suppose you were to take 30 linear steps,
each about a meter or a yard long.
At the end of 30 steps you'd have taken, well, 30 steps.
But if you were to take an exponential walk,
your first step would be about a meter,
but the second step would be two meters.
The next one four, the next eight, and so on.
By the time you'd taken 30 exponential steps,
you'd have gone about a billion meters,
or 250 times around the planet.
Exponential changes are having a
profound effect on our organizations,
our institutions, and even on our personal lives.
Look at how many leaps in technology
we already take for granted.
Apple's iPhone, the first smart phone,
was only released in 2007.
Self driving trucks and cars,
once thought to be absolutely impossible,
are now in use around the world.
It's not just amazing that so many advances are now real,
it's how readily we accept that
they become part of the fabric of our lives.
As the pace of change increases,
organizations are inevitably flattening.
Organizations are adapting processes
that'll allow them to respond to
rapidly changing market needs.
Communication then needs to be leaner and faster.
People need to collaborate
no matter where they are in the world,
and decisions need to be made in the blink of an eye.
Often without realizing it,
we now need to follow what I call "The New Rules of Work".
There's now a totally different set of guidelines
that determine how we're successful
in a world of constant change.
Following those old rules of work
is no longer a formula for success.
We need to learn a new set of rules
if we're going to perform.
Inevitably all of these dramatic shifts
must affect the way we think about performance.
Annual strategic plans, they're becoming stale.
Annual performance reviews are out of date
after only a few months.
And many of the metrics we used
to measure performance in past years
are no longer relevant.
So given how rapidly automation and globalization
are changing the very nature of work,
and of organizations,
how could we continue to use the
performance management techniques of the past?
We can't.
We need to accept that the pace
of change isn't going to stop.
And we need to actually design
our approach to performance management,
so that we are continually adapting
to an ever changing landscape.