Thriving. How to stay relevant in a rapidly changing world

I know it's obvious but that's the point of this observation and those to follow.  They are designed to be things that 90% of us can readily agree on because we have observed them personally or intuitively know them to be true.  The real questions will come later when we ask if we know these to be true why do we ignore them in the way we manage change? and how do we need to change change to improve our effectiveness?  Let's start breaking this observation down.  First an acknowledgement.   Pretty much everything changes.  Continents move, species evolve, landscapes erode and rebuild and what's acceptable in society evolves over time.  This change is omnipresent and likely the type of thing Heraclitus was referring to when he said "change is the only constant in life" in 585 BC.  This change however is relatively slow and fairly constant (perhaps excepting our current climate change issues).  As a general rule what is causing the pace of ...

  Change! It's everywhere and omni present. In our personal lives, at work, the expectations of our customers and the market offerings of our competitors. Not only is change omni present we all believe that change is happening at a faster pace today than it ever has before (more on this later). "change is the only constant in life." Heraclitus, (a Greek philosopher) approximately 535 BC For something that has been around "forever" we are notoriously bad at managing change. I have written about this is various forms over the years. Consider this extract from my Value Led Change White Paper. Mckinsey report that 70 % of change programmes fail to deliver. The Standish Group, in their aptly named Chaos report, state that only 29% of software development projects are successful.  The remaining 71% being troubled or considered an outright failure.  To make matters worse, the larger and presumably more important a project the lower the chances that it will succe...