As we start a new financial year amidst lockdown, the covid chaos of the past 18 months remains a challenge.
Like many, I recently moved to a home office after selling my business premises. It took ages to clear bookshelves as I fell into the trap of glancing over highlighted passages of books that had helped my career; and couldn’t bear to part with copies signed by authors I knew.
Since my days as an executive with IBM, I admired the no-nonsense energetic delivery of former McKinsey management guru, Tom Peters who wrote the New York Times #1 best-seller, ‘In Search of Excellence’. We met at a conference when I started out as an author and speaker. Over 20 years later, I dusted off his lesser-known tome; ‘Thriving on Chaos.’ Although written after the 1987 stock market crash, the title is equally relevant today.
The inside jacket flap states:
‘Everywhere and every day, managers confront shattering and accelerating change…in a chaotic new world.’
Hmmm, sound familiar? I haven’t had a chance to re-read the entire book but some chapter headings are just as applicable today in what Peters labelled:
Prescriptions for a World Turned Upside Down:
-Achieving flexibility by empowering people
-Use self-managing teams
-Learning to love change
-Reconceive the middle managers role
-Decentralise information, authority & strategic planning
-Master paradox
Not every chapter is as relevant but most sound practices stand the test of time. So too, I’m reminded of Peter Drucker who, in 1954, published ‘The Changing World of the Executive.‘ Although that was decades before I attended Harvard University, his legendary quote was prominent in our leadership curriculum:
‘The best way to predict the future is to create it.‘
Yes, change is constant. In my own book, Chapter 14 of ‘Hot Lemon & Honey-Reflections for Success in Times of Change’ is titled:
‘Change is inevitable. Learning from change is optional!’
Peter Drucker passed away in 2005, aged 95 and Tom Peters turns 78 this year and still actively comments on Twitter with his trademark candor. Amidst some of the fads of self-proclaimed ‘thought leaders’ of today, don’t we need sustainable wisdom that stands the test of time?
Timeless! I love my Kindle—and all my books are now on Amazon—but sorting through those bookshelves left me with a lingering sense of lingering déjà vu—that sometimes the more things change, the more they remain the same.
In this current age of covid chaos, will your decisions be based on a trendy whim or on sustainable wisdom? Will you be a victim or a victor of change? Those choices are entirely yours and I’m sure you’ll choose wisely.
All the best for the remaining 6 months of 2021.