Whether you believe that change is going to impact your business 2 years, 5 years, or 10 years from now, I’ve got breaking news. Millennials, Gen Z, and technology are changing normal. And whatever time frame you believe you have to adapt… cut it in half. The future is happening much faster on a greater scale than ever before.
That was my message during an interview with Curt Tueffert, VP of Sales Development at DXP Enterprises.
As an example of how quickly things are changing, I wrote and published Geeks, Geezers, and Googlization in 2009, just 7 years ago. The oldest Millennials were under 30 and the youngest just became teenagers. And Steve Jobs hadn’t yet unveiled the iPad yet while smartphones were in still their infancy.
Today the oldest Millennials are 36 years old and the youngest are eligible to vote. There are 2,638 smartphones are sold, 24,733 apps are downloaded from the Apple store, and 3, 437,500 videos are viewed on YouTube…every 60 seconds!
That’s just the tip of the iceberg. While many organizations are still trying to figure out how to recruit, manage, and market to Millennials, Generation Z has entered in the workforce and college.
Things are changing so fast and on such as scale, the U.S. military about 25 years ago realized it needed a new game plan. It came up with a pretty funny acronym to deal with it. They called it VUCA which stands for Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, and Ambiguous. It’s a brilliant assessment of the how unpredictable and fragile our world can be at times. Apparently I’m not alone in feeling that way because many organizations and businesses have adopted VUCA as their baseline of a new normal too.
So how can management as well as individuals silence all the noise and get a clear direction and understanding of the immediate and not-so-distant future?
First, listen to the podcast and then download a preview of When the SHIFT Hits Your Plan.
