Dawna talks to Dr Carol Mase about adaptive change in a time of volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity. They explore why we resist change, preferring to wait until destabilizing external forces beyond our control impose change upon us.
VUCA: Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity. These set the context for business operations and determine the direction in which organizations evolve. Everyone is a change agent in a climate of complex adaptation but change imposed from the top down as a reaction to these variables sets up resistance. People prefer change if they have chosen it themselves.
This time, Dawna discusses adaptive change with Dr Carol Mase. Carol has an extensive education in medical and social sciences and has worked as an entrepreneur, global marketing executive, and organizational coach-consultant. She brings the 'new sciences' of complexity, neuroscience, and systems thinking to business and leadership.
According to Carol, faced with the need for widespread institutional change, we resist, preferring, either consciously or unconsciously, to wait until destabilizing external forces beyond our control impose change upon us. We hold tight to the existing status quo, continually reinforcing what isn't working.
In so doing, we ignore a level of organizational and systemic dysfunction that sickens the earth and produces human disengagement, cynicism, loss of trust, and, ultimately, resource and ecological depletion and a world on the brink of destruction.
Evolutionary Provocateur
