Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

Situations change and people adapt to those changes. Has adapting to chance taken away your  ability to adapt?

Change is constant

Okay, that is neither original nor brilliant. It does, however, describe my experiences.

Groups of people adapt

Another observation that is neither original nor brilliant.

What many people fail to observe is how to have groups of people adapt. Most groups of people adapt to one situation. They become better and better for their situation. In engineering terms,

they optimize their operation for their situation

Optimization, however, reduces and sometimes eliminates the ability to adapt. Hence,

Constant change leads to constant adaptation which eliminates adaptability

This is a principle of general systems thinking. Look around,

1. The railroads optimized at rail transportation. They lost the ability to adapt to changes in transportation technology and they were clobbered by automotive and air transportation.
2. Kodak optimized for chemical-based photographic film. They lost the ability to adapt to changes in recording images and they were clobbered by digital image capture (digital photography).
3. The Swiss watch makers optimized at making tiny mechanical devices. They lost the ability to adapt to changes in time keeping and they were clobbered by the digital watch.

We could go on.

Is your organization adapting to one situation? Are you optimizing to one environment? Have you lost the ability to adapt?