Adaptation to the Pace of Change

The pace of our personal and professional lives seems to be getting faster by the day. In order to operate most efficiently, we must be prepared to change at a moment's notice. While it may increase our productivity in many ways, there are also negative aspects of change that we must expect and deal with.

Since change requires adaptation, the pressure on individuals to become ever more resilient is intense: speeding up processes, demanding 24/7 attention, depending upon and integrating technological shifts, elimination of slack leading to efficiencies but also stress, and the need for continuous personal education and development, we must ask, is it realistic? Can management and the workforce be as Proteus, the first shape shifter (from Greek mythology), and become all things to all challenges?

This student views the change as a process that we have accepted and that adaptation will continue to grow rapidly. Technology has grown a desire to obtain information at a rapid rate. Server down, or email outages in business can cause a business to lose customers and millions of revenue hourly (Abrams, 2010).

Society, through technology, has increased its demand for information, and individuals and organizations have adapted. We have moved from desktop to laptops, from laptops to net books, from net books to mobile phones. The transformation is happening at an alarming pace and continues to require humans to morph to accomplish the tasks technology helps them accomplish.

The hours of operation for individuals in the business world have shifted from 9-5 to 24/7. There is an expectation that email's prompt response on email's and the user of voice mails has become obsolete. The shift continues to happen; Facebook is now developing an E-Mail services that integrates our email, instant message, Facebook message and tweets into one view (Helft, 2010). So in answering the question of the workforce continues to shape shift, this student agrees that the change is inevitable. The integration of social networks with email services will increase the response time and enhance the communication medium.

Abraham Maslow describes the human beings desire to feed their need on different levels in order to obtain satisfaction (Maslow, 2000). Technology helps feed our need for smaller and faster, the continuous availability of new technology drives us to adapt. 20 years ago, email was in its infant stages, and over the past decade, it has grown into the dominant mode of communication; now considered an outdated mode of interaction (Helft, 2010). The adaptation will continue to happen, and this student views it as a run-away train that will be challenging to slow down let alone stop.

Reference

Abrams, R. (2010). Server down? You've just lost potential customers. USA Today. Retrieved on November 17, 2010 from http://www.usatoday.com/money/smallbusiness/columnist/abrams/2010-03-19-networks-key-for-small-business_N.htm

Helft, M. (2010). Facebook to start an e-mail service. NY Times. Retrieved on November 17, 2010 from http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/12/facebook-to-start-an-e-mail-service/

Maslow, A. (2000). The Maslow business reader. New York: Wiley.