Slow change is hard to spot

Slow change is hard to spot

Thinking back over recent months, I was in a number of discussions that caused me (and others in the meetings) to acknowledge and reflect on how the world around us has changed over time. While this statement is academically apparent I know that I, for one, don’t always act with it in mind. For example, it’s possible for organizational changes to look obvious now – why weren’t they done when reviewed previously? I might think it’s personal motivations of the people involved, but invariably it’s that the situation over time has changed to create alignment that wasn’t there in the past. Another example is how the business landscape has changed over our company’s lifetime. Our success has been grounded in axioms that have stood the test of time, such as “Customers want more selection at low prices delivered fast”. Selection, price, and speed were highly relevant when the company was founded and still are today. But search engines, social media, global logistics, competition, direct-to-consumer websites and customer expectations have all changed over this time period. In some cases it’s taken decades to evolve and create a new norm and in others it’s a matter of months or a year (e.g. GenAI). I think it’s the slower changes that sometimes catch us napping. Like looking at myself in the mirror each morning, such slow changes are hard to see. We, as a team, can get better at pointing out these shifts to each other and living in the question of what that means for our customers?