The cover of my recently-released book 'What The Heck Do I Do With My Life?' has a picture of a dinosaur on it. This T-Rex is a metaphor for what Charles Darwin once famously said: 'It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent; it is the one most adaptable to change.'
Sixty-five million years ago, when an asteroid struck the earth, it unleashed such an extraordinary amount of change in such a short period of time, that seventy-five percent of all living things were unable to adapt and became extinct, including dinosaurs. However, some creatures were able to adapt to the new conditions the new normal - and they flourished. Amongst these were our ancestors, the early mammals.
Such periods of extreme change pose what is called an 'adaptation challenge' for us. And they result in Darwinian binary outcomes: those who can adapt, flourish; those who cannot perish. We are living through a period of similar intense change right now. The world will change more in this century. However, this time, the change is driven not by an asteroid, but by us. There are so many forces at play: technology, climate change, or rather the backlash of all our unsustainable behavior, extreme inequality, polarisation, loss of trust... I could go on, but essentially, all this is combining to create an extremely turbulent world... a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous or VUCA world. We saw this very vividly during the COVID-19 pandemic – where, those who were able to adapt, flourished; those who couldn't suffered.
The 21st Century: Future of Work and Skills
With this deep emphasis on the need for us to adapt to our rapidly-changing times, allow me to share a few tools and strategies that may be useful to flourish in times like this. My focus here is not just only on the individual level, but also for larger organizations and HR leaders like you.
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