ACCELERATING CHANGE

The changes discussed thus far in globalization, diversity, technology, and sustainability point to a very strong and important point: the rate of change is likely to continue to be rapid and increasingly disruptive with respect to traditional models of how organizations are designed and how they manage their talent. Most of our models of talent management and organization design assume a stance toward change that is episodic—that is, they argue for an analysis of the situation, an implementation of changes that are needed, and a period of stability until the next period of change needs to occur.

It is now well established that the traditional change model is no longer appropriate because it operates too slowly. What is needed instead is a continuous change approach in which organizations are agile and capable of constantly changing the ways in which they operate. They cannot rely on periods of stability during which they can perfect recent changes and plan for the next ones. Rather, they need to be constantly experimenting and changing what they do and how they operate in order to respond quickly to the rapidly changing environments they face. To do this they must have talent management practices that support experimentation, agility, and change.