The overwhelming change you feel today is going to increase. Engage the change.

Image courtesy of DollarPhotoClub.com before they closed their doors.
Image courtesy of DollarPhotoClub.com before they closed their doors.

The massive volumes of change you see surrounding you everywhere you look isn’t going to stop. In fact the pace of change is going to increase.

Each of us have a choice. Either figure out how to cope with and embrace the change or ignore it.

The cost of ignoring massive change is that you and your organization will get left behind. That doesn’t just mean you will be a laggard as you continue doing next month what you did last year. Instead that means your organization will radically shrink and before you know it, will disappear.

The downsides are serious. There is an upside and it is exciting.

Four articles I’ve seen lately focus the mind. While these articles are written in either the accounting or church context, they also fully apply in the church and accounting context. They also apply to every individual and organization.

This article will be posted across all my blogs because it applies to all of them.

7/7 – Bill Sheridan at LinkedIn – Embrace change or resist it: Only one option is viable.

The odds are really high that tax preparation will be completely automated in the next two decades. Estimated odds are almost as high that both accounting and auditing will be fully automated.

Consider my business and my core tasks of auditing charities. There is a real possibility those types of audits could be heavily automated in 10 or 15 or 20 years. I am not old enough to bank on retiring before that massive change starts eating away the entire audit profession.

Automation will take over an increasing number of tasks. The world of tax, accounting, and audit will be affected. Mr. Sheridan explains the shelf life of education and experience we have is shrinking.

As the Maryland Association of CPAs routinely points out our learning needs to be greater than the rate of change; L>C is their formula.

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Succession planning in a local church

Transitioning from one senior pastor to the next is a difficult and dangerous time for a church. I’ve watched a few of my clients walk through the transition. It is always difficult.

Pr. Warren Bird provides a superb introduction to the topic in his article at Christianity Today – How Pastors Are Passing the Leadership Baton.

He starts by quoting Rick Warren: (more…)

Impact of the technology revolution has barely begun

(Cross-post from my other blog, Outrun Change.)

That we haven’t seen the full impact of IT is a comment I heard the first time a few years ago. That sort of made sense but didn’t really register. This blog is focused on sorting out that change. The idea that the technology revolution has barely begun finally clicked for me with a column by Matthew Yglesias – Why I’m Optimistic About Growth and Innovation.

A few industries have seen huge impact from technology. Think of book publishing, journalism, and music. Those industries have been turned upside down. I read a lot and listen to a bit of music so am quite attuned to those areas. The way everyone consumes news has been transformed. I regularly read dozens of blogs a day. They just appear on my computer screen with a mouse click or two. I’ve always been a news junkie, and my consumption has soared in the last few years.

However, as big as those industries are, they are a small part of the total economy.

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Three skills for living in a social media world

There will be three career fields in huge demand in the social media world. That is the idea Mark Schaefer presents in his blog, {grow}.

I discuss this in my post Three Skills for Living in a Social Media World at my other blog, Outrun Change.

At an individual level, I think these three careers point to skills each of us need to develop if we wish to function in a world dominated by social media.  The career fields and individual skills are: (more…)