Across sectors--retailing, brokerage, software, publishing, computers--business models that produced profits for decades have shut down. In most cases managers aren't sure what the new model will be, but they're absolutely certain it won't have a multidecade lifespan.
How often does a model have to change in today's world? "Until recently, very few companies have had to change ... every three to four years, but now many of them do," says Adrian Slywotzky of Mercer Management Consulting, co-author of business bestsellers The Profit Zone and How to Grow When Markets Don't. "Every eight to ten years--that's heaven today."
The most intractable problems of managing in chaos aren't those of structuring the organization or identifying the right model for the future. They are the utterly human problems of getting people in groups to behave in new ways. Some of the reasons are familiar. All change creates winners and losers in an organization, and the caveman part of our brains is still wired to defend against loss above all. So people almost always resist change.
An even more profound problem in companies that make changes: saying goodbye. The late Peter Drucker identified the key management challenge of the 21st century as leading change, and he believed the most important policy for doing that was "to abandon yesterday." By yesterday he meant whatever no longer works.
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