The Speed of Change

How are you going to deal with the speed of change? In a world of continuous change and ever faster change some principles never change and they will allow you to take the speed of change in your stride. Read on to learn those principles. This article is 630 words long and will take about 2 or 3 minutes to read.

There’s a 5-minute long video http://www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3DlUMf7FWGdCw that tells you how rapidly the world is changing. The speed of change is set to keep getting faster and change is going to become more prolific. Here are just a few of the facts quoted:

• The top 10 in-demand jobs in 2010 did not exist in 2004.
• It is estimated that a week’s worth of the New York Times contains more information than a person was likely to come across in a lifetime in the 18th century.
• The amount of new technical information is doubling every 2 years. For students starting a 4 year technical degree this means that half of what they learn in the first year of study will be outdated by their third year of study.

With such a speed of change (and it’s getting faster), how can you cope? It’s easy to get lost and overwhelmed. When the way forward is not clear and certain then we tend to dither, worry and get nowhere, so what’s going to stop you from getting outdated and then left behind?

What you need is a set of problem-solving principles and methods to guide you whatever happens. This is essential for dealing with now and the future so that you remain in control, so that you can set the sail of your boat to deal with any wind rather than getting capsized or dashed upon the rocks at the slightest sign of a squall.

Every difficulty in life is a problem and there is a generic approach to solving problems that never changes. Many of us are so used to having solutions spoon fed to us that we are unclear on just what it takes to identify a problem, come up with a solution and then systematically turn that solution into a bona-fide reality.

Here are the basic principles that will take you through thick and thin, through timeless problems and the latest difficulty that looms into view no matter what the speed of change accelerates to:

1. Specify the problem in detail – what is the exact result that you want to get and what is preventing you from getting it?
2. Speculate on a solution – what might allow you to get the result that you want with a high level of certainty?
3. Choose the most appropriate solution – given your personal limitations, which options are the easiest and most likely to work for you?
4. Plan how to turn the idea into a reality – how will things be created and in what order?
5. Gather resources – this can also include developing yourself as a resource so that you have more knowledge and skills.
6. Create specific processes for getting each thing done – plans are never enough, you need specific instructions to make taking action easy.
7. Implement the work – you’ve prepared everything very thoroughly so now you can create the result.
8. Refine the result – things often don’t turn out exactly how you would like, sometimes some extra tuning is necessary.

This is the generic approach to solving any problem. The details vary, the effort varies, the duration varies, but essentially the approach is always the same. Hold on to these principles and make them the backbone of everything that you do and you can march into the future taking the speed of change in your stride.

In the rest of this series, these principles will be expanded upon.