Chapter 1Surviving and Thriving in Turbulence
The future depends on what you do today.
—Mahatma Gandhi
Look out! In workplaces across the globe, conventional wisdom is being thrown out the window.
Approaches that were tried and true are being challenged and debunked. Rules that once made sense no longer seem to apply. Everything around us seems to be in flux—from how we conduct ourselves to how companies are functioning.
For example, just 61 companies that were in the Fortune 500 in 1995 were still on the list in 2015. Only 12 percent remained.1
Products that were staples are going away forever. Good-bye landline telephones, cable television, and personal computers. The music industry has been changed forever by downloads and streaming. While few use single-tasking cameras, more than 20 million photos are uploaded to social media every minute of every day.
Information ricochets around the world in mere seconds. Facts are checked instantaneously. Truth can be uncovered quickly, and fiction can be spread just as quickly. As a result, politics in most countries are in a constant state of upheaval.
It's a strange new world, and all indicators predict it will only get stranger.
Today, Not Tomorrow
The future of work is not tomorrow. The future of work is today!
In our work with business leaders and teams around the world, we see too many companies missing out—still operating according to twentieth-century mind-sets, practices, and technologies.
We also see the careers of too many ...
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