Content area
Full Text
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself; therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." - George Bernard Shaw
"Being unreasonable may be one of your tickets to future success." -Watts Wacker
Abstract This article is an edited version of the author's keynote presentation at the Strategic Leadership Forum's 1999 Conference. He discusses the new dynamics of change, or the way change changes; his vision of how thinking will be organized in the future; and the new rules for succeeding in a world of chaos. Using examples from historical events, he proposes that civilization is again entering a time of supreme discontinuity. Living successfully in this time of absolute change requires a kind of cultural schizophrenia in which one virtually lives in two worlds at the same time without feeling any inconsistency.
Keywords Change management, Culture, Trends, Thinking styles, Chaos, Strategic management
As a futurist, I believe I have four responsibilities: (1) to study the human condition or, as the .Germans would say, the zeitgeist; (2) to study the dynamics of change, or the way change changes; (3) to offer you a vision around which to organize your affairs, e.g. Marshall McLuhan's "the medium is the message," Alvin Toffler's "changing rate of change," and John Naisbitt's "diffusion of high-tech, hightouch"; and (4) to provoke you into thinking in new ways.
I operate in a world where there are two types of people: the customer and the consultant. Customers are those with problems, and they either know what the problems are or they don't. Consultants deal with solutions, and they either know the solutions to these problems or they don't. As we all know, the whole world can be described in a two-by-two matrix, so let's fill in the boxes. (See Exhibit 1.)
* If the customer knows the problem and the consultant knows the solution, the company will want to hire the best and the brightest. You, the customer, know what needs to be done; the consultant knows how to get it done, and presto - your problem becomes an opportunity. This is the time to take action.
* If the customer knows the problem but the consultant doesn't...