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"If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle."
Sun Tzu

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I’ve been thinking and talking with people about change a lot recently.  And then my dear friend David J Smith, the author of “If the World Were a Village” and “This Child, Every Child” http://www.mapping.com/resources.shtml gave us an advance copy of his wonderful new book, “If; A Mind-Bending New Way of Looking and Big Ideas and Numbers” to be in book stores on August 1st. It is a wonderful book, I can highly recommend it.

The first page I opened to was one that said, “ If all the inventions and discoveries humans have made were laid out on a measuring tape 36 inches long….” So here are some of the items. Fire would be at one end, representing about 780,000 years ago. At about 18 inches, humans first build shelters. The bow and arrow is first used about 33 inches. The wheel, 35 ¾ inches.  David then notes, “In the last 1/10 in. come all the inventions in the past 2000 years, from the number zero, to paper and plastics, telephones, cars, computers and satellites.” 

What is both exciting and unnerving, is the next 20 years. The next tiny, tiny sliver of this measuring tape, will likely change our world (positively and negatively) as much as the last 2000. For example the first Blackberry Smart phone appeared 11 short years ago. The first iPhone was released in 2007 (and discontinued in 2008 when the iPhone 3G appeared) Might this new mobility be the Gutenberg printing press of our time? Certainly the financial services business is working very hard to keep up with a concept unheard of five years ago; mobile payments. Our technology systems are getting smaller and smaller, and will soon be more than handheld, they will be embedded into us; ‘google glasses become google contacts?!” We are already noticing that people born say after 1985 in the West, appear to think at least a little differently. Consider the difference for example between technology natives and technology immigrants. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/april-rudin/life-on-a-social-media-is_b_4600429.html.

 A few weeks ago, I wrote about exponential change, http://www.alisdairsmith.com/index.php/leadership-notes/260-change. I suggested there that there were three main practices to focus on for leaders at this time:
1. Keep learning. Assume that you too need to be growing your intellectual, emotional and spiritual intelligence exponentially just to stay ahead of the curve.
2. Practice collaboration. In an increasingly connected world, the lone hero is increasingly irrelevant. You cannot do it all anymore.
3. Practice inclusivity. There will be huge opportunities to learn from other cultures, other philosophies and ideas in the coming decades. Just as there will be no more room for the lone hero, the idea of a single way, will becoming redundant. We will not be competitors but co-operators.

The one thing I’d like to add to this focus list this week, especially for the ‘Boomers’ who are ‘in charge’ now, get digitally connected. Yes face to face dialogue is important for us, and, (and this is a big and) the digital revolution itself is creating possibilities we have not yet begin to imagine. If you think the last 200 years has been crazy, welcome to the next 20!