The Future Leader

5Pace of Change

Whether we look at climate change, globalization, technology, demographics, cyber-security, geopolitical issues, competition, or any of the other numerous trends shaping our lives and organizations, it's clear that change happens quickly and happens all the time. We will experience more change in the coming decades than we have experienced in the past hundreds of years.

This was the second top trend impacting the future of leadership as identified by all of the CEOs I interviewed and by all of the people surveyed. Change is a constant. But it's not change itself that the world's top business leaders are concerned with; it's how quickly change happens, and the pace is only increasing! This change is being fueled by many variables such as technological progress, changes in customer and employee demands and expectations, competition, and globalization. It feels as though we're on a treadmill and our trainer keeps telling us to up the speed. The question then becomes, how fast can we truly go?

The pace of change is aptly summarized from a conversation I had with David Henshall, president and CEO of Citrix, a computer software company with over 8,500 employees around the world. He stated, “Both the rate and the pace of change have been accelerating and will continue to do so in the foreseeable future. As a result, disruption can come from anywhere and from any size ...