perpetual beta — our new normal – Harold Jarche

Joichi Ito, the director of the24 esteemed MIT Media Lab, offers an interesting theory about the need for lifelong adaptation. When the world moved at a slower pace and things weren’t quite so complex, we spent the early part of life in learning mode. Then, once you became an adult, “you figured out what your job was and you repeated the same thing

They are complex, participatory, interconnected, interdependent, and continually evolving systems, like ecosystems in nature. Form follows need. Roles are picked up, discarded, and exchanged fluidly. Power is distributed. Decisions are made at the point of origin. Innovations can spring up from all quarters. Meetings are held when they are needed.

People who make mistakes or experiment with new ways of doing things are not marginalized. Instead, they are treated as founts of wisdom because they have had experiences that the organization needs to capture.

To adapt, companies must operate not as machines but as learning organisms, purposefully interacting with their environment and continuously improving, based on experiments and feedback.

As you move along the spectrum, you’re increasingly likely to work in a team, lean on experts, and invest much more time in the process.

People have a limited velocity to unlearn and relearn. The pace of change cannot be forced; it can be nurtured. People adopt change in the shape of a normal, cumulative probability distribution (i.e., an S-curve), starting with the natural Innovators. Improving ways of working needs to be safe-to-learn and within risk appetite. Middle management ar

People have a limited velocity to unlearn and relearn. The pace of change cannot be forced; it can be nurtured. People adopt change in the shape of a normal, cumulative probability distribution (i.e., an S-curve), starting with the natural Innovators. Improving ways of working needs to be safe-to-learn and within risk appetite. Middle management ar

Alternatively, lose the notion of projects entirely and build incremental capabilities in a steady flow.