Change is as change does

I often snicker to myself when I hear people talk about change management professionals, and I wonder how long can that last?  It wasn't so long ago that change and adaptation were things that only happened every now and then.  Many basked in the monotony of their daily routines that varied only slightly year by year.  Every function had it's place, and every place had it's function.  Distinction and clarity was a must.  In that kind of environment, when something changed you had better hoped you had a fancy change management consultant to help take your woes away.  I exaggerate of course, but a lot of companies excelled by having linear workers because repetition improved efficiency.  But those days are dying quickly.

The hand is quicker than the eye
In today's ever changing, fast paced world change management no longer comes in the form of a consultant that can be brought in.  It's something that everybody needs to embody.  Things are changing at an alarming rate.  The internet ages everything exponentially quicker. Where fashion, standards, and opinions can morph in the blink of an eye, how does anyway settle into a routine?

The only thing that's certain is that the way you're doing whatever it is you're doing today, will be different in a year from now.  And at the route of all this is Information Liquidity.  The more that we have access to, the more that we know; the more that we know, the more that we change.

This ain't Kansas anymore
The concept of opening up your business to the public, by way of social media or crowdsourcing, was a scary leap for many brands and now that they`re out there, it can be even scarier.  With so much transparency, a brand needs to stay agile to compliment the environment that it`s operating in.

So What?
This week I read The Dawn of the Human Network, the introduction from the book crowdsourcing and also watched a short video called The Crowdsourcing Evolution.  The flexibility and "change management," that is required to manage a brand in our newly connected world, requires us all to operate with less clarity and definition, less "control", and more blurred lines of responsibility.  

In the article How to Build your Startup without Learning Code, the author suggests ways for you, a non-programmer, to conceptualize ideas in a more tangible way.  Even though development and programming isn't your role, we all need to know how to speak the language, at least come close to it enough to communicate in some rudimentary form.  The lines are becoming blurred.  

The amount of communication that needs to happen between a brand and the public, requires even more communication to happen within the company.  Silo's will need to be torn down, functions will inter-lap, and change management WILL NOT come in the form of a man in a suit, but as daily routine.