Why adaptability is more powerful than strength
You don’t need me to tell you the world around us is going through huge change: technological advancements, digital disruption, climate change, social norms and values of yesteryear no longer being the norm, expectations about working and quality of life.
All of this has an impact on industries, organisations, teams and ourselves. So we ignore it at our peril.
The pace of that change is only going to get faster, I think, what with advancements in AI. Rapid change can be bewildering and it’s tempting to cling on to what we know and hope that it all goes back to normal. It’s unlikely it will. It will be a new normal.
It’s at times like this that I think about the dinosaurs going about their merry way before the asteroid hit and changed their lives forever. They didn’t know what was coming and, even if they did, I’m not sure they’d have been able to do anything about it.
But we are not dinosaurs and technology has moved on a little since those days.
Charles Darwin, the famous evolutionary biologist, way before the smartphone was even a twinkle in Apple’s eye, was credited with saying that survival was about the ‘survival of the fittest’.
But what he actually said is this:
‘It is not the strongest of the species that survive, not the most intelligent, but the one MOST RESPONSIVE TO CHANGE’.
It was those species who responded and adapted to change that survived.
And I think it’s that that is so relevant to us. Change is going to happen whether we like it or not, so how do we help ourselves and put ourselves in a position to be most responsive and adaptable?
Here’s what I think:
Make time and space in your life to understand the bigger picture. What’s happening in the world, how it’s impacting industries, how it impacts organisations and you.
Read, listen, converse with and be open to a wide variety of differing sources and points of view. So much of the information we get is polarised / black or white no shades of grey or colour. Look for the nuances and question what you hear.
Make learning a core value for you and your team. Be it understanding AI or market fluctuations, make it part of your daily life. Ask yourself, ‘what have I learned today’
Finally, learn to embrace change as an opportunity rather than resisting it as a threat. I know that’s easier said than done but use your intelligence to tweak your mindset and think ‘what are the opportunities with this change?’
Hope that helps!
