Nearly a year go I posted this musing on the nature of our times. How do we categorize the fundamental changes we are experiencing? We have moved from the industrial revolution to the information age to... ?
I dubbed our era the "time of awareness" which I now find an inadequate description. Awareness is one of the indications of our time, inter-connectivity (a gift from the information age) another, considerations of sustainability a third. Of course these all weave together.
In the business world we have remnants of the mechanized industrial age as underlying structures: hierarchy (which hails back to empire), machine-like output expectations (even of people), assembly lines, cubicles... The language of war influences the language and mind-set of business (another sign of empire's influence). Commerce operates on the network of the information age: computers, the internet, data, communication, "rational" decision-making and analysis. New times are afoot, but what are they?
Indications of change:
-Power to the people, which I have mentioned before - customers and employees are empowered with information and choice
-Sustainability considerations becoming more prevalent
-Understanding our impact on people and the planet
-Consideration outside ourselves, even in other parts of the world
-Servant leadership
-Movement from strategic management to principle based management
-Respect
-Business schools offering programs in sustainability and social entrepreneurship
-Overlapping circles of knowledge, multi-disciplinary cross-pollination
-Deeper understanding of our natural world
-Physicists and mystics agree
I have no answers only questions, as embedded in the question is the answer I wait for it to be revealed. On a book review saw "Age of Transcendence" mentioned as people are looking for more meaning.
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