Are You Doing Today’s Work with Yesterday’s Tools?

In my book “Jolt!” I discuss the incredibly disruptive change that’s happening in our culture. From technology, to business, education, politics, leadership, and more – it seems that everything is changing at light speed. And perhaps an even bigger issue is that most people are trying to compete in today’s marketplace with yesterday’s tools.
By “tools” I mean, ideas, strategies, thinking, and yes – even physical tools. In the digital age, you can’t look at work through analog eyes. The era of connectivity and social media forces us to think differently – how we produce goods, market those goods, and connect with customers. In the non-profit space, how we reach potential donors, share our story, and cause them to act have changed, and while many overarching principles are the same, the tools have changed dramatically.
Stop trying to re-create your past success with the methods that worked back then. Write this down: From this moment forward, your ability to handle change – including thinking in new ways – may just be the single biggest key to your future success.
I wonder how the believers in the Amish community would answer your question?
(Wikipedia provides some interesting basic info about them and that.)
The Amish are doing YESTERDAY’S work with YESTERDAY’S tools….. 🙂
I was thinking something like that. I was also thinking of a funny story about a salesman trying to sell an electric vacuum cleaner to an Amish farmer. We do not want your blog to turn into a joke column, but the punch line is “Start eatin’. That’s fertilizer..and we ain’t got no electricity.”
I was suddenly reminded of the episode of The Simpsons, where Homer gets the Amish to build a tree house with electricity, for Bart…
Change is pain. Our success in anything has a lot to do with perserving through pain.