Change Is The Only Constant

My goal this weekend was to finish reading "Where Have All the Leaders Gone?" by Lee Iacocca. I have to write an 8-12 pg. paper over it by Nov. 6th and figured that with my busy weekday scheds as of late, it would be a good idea to get the book read this weekend while I had the time. I'm proud to say that I was successful in accomplishing this goal. I had started it during the first few weeks of the semester but then hadn't touched it for weeks. I read the rest (another 163 pages!) this weekend. Iacocca presents some eye-opening views on leadership and while I was kinda shocked at how blunt he was sometimes, it was still a rather interesting read. Here's a particular passage I liked:
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Question: What is the truest definition of Globalization?
Answer: Princess Diana's death.
Question: How come?
Answer: An English princess with an Egyptian boyfriend crashes in a French tunnel, driving a German car with a Dutch engine, driven by a Belgian who was drunk on Scotch whiskey, followed closely by an Italian Paparazzi, on Japanese motorcycles, treated by an American doctor, using Brazilian medicines. This is posted by an American, using Bill Gates' technology, and you're probably reading this on a computer that uses Taiwanese chips and a Korean monitor, assembled by Bangladeshi workers in a Singapore plant, transported by Indian lorry-drivers, hijacked by Indonesians, unloaded by Sicilian longshoremen, and trucked to you by Mexican illegals. That, my friend, is Globalization!

I'm not trying to make light of Princess Diana's death. But it kind of makes your head spin to consider how interconnected the world has become. Some people are nervous about globalization. And some people are just in denial. But it's impossible to escape it - the way the world seeps in. You can't fence the world out, and you can't fence yourself in. Technology knows no borders. As one of the first computer geeks stated, "Information wants to be free".

To fear globalization is to fear change, but like it or not, change is a constant in our lives.

Now I don't know about you, but every time in my life I got secure and complacent, God threw me a curve. Looking back, I now see that it wasn't a curve, it was a challenge. A challenge I needed. I had to shake off my complacency and change. Whenever you hear anyone saying, "Let's keep doing things exactly the way we've been doing them for twenty years," watch out. A shake-up is coming.

The seasons change. Summer follows spring, and night follows day. Life is full of ups and downs. Business cycles go round and round. Events happen that rock your world: People in the family die. You get a divorce. You get fired. Your business goes under. I've been through all these changes, and each time I've had to wake up and try something different.

Before you can deal with change, however, you have to see it. Then you have to accept it. Sometimes that's the hardest part - acknowledging and then accepting that the way you've always done business or lived your life just won't work anymore.

"Where Have All the Leaders Gone?" (copyright 2007 by Lee Iacocca & Associates, Inc.)
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I thought his globalization point was very valid. The dialogue about Princess Diana's death only further drove home the point that as Thomas Friedman has said "the world is flat". On one hand it's kinda scary to think about having to compete with people all over the world for jobs in today's global marketplace. At the same time, I find it rather exciting to think about how interconnected the world has really become. For example, I'm wearing a t-shirt made in Haiti, sweatpants made in China, and a watch made in Japan. I'm blogging on a computer with components made in Malaysia and anyone around the world can read this post with a click of a mouse. I've chatted on this computer to people everywhere from Germany to Guatemala.

I also appreciated his comments on change. Just yesterday I wrote a journal entry (one of 6 that I have to do for an assignment in the same class that I'm reading this book for). The topic was "Recall a life experience that you feel you learned a major life lesson from". I wrote about how my parents' divorce affected me. Now I didn't go into the messy details of everything that happened but focused instead on what I learned from it. The biggest point I tried to address was learning to adapt to change. In a world where change truly is the only constant, I believe that this flexibility is a crucial skill. I'm nowhere near being perfect in that category but I really do think that my experiences have helped me in that regard. I think Tracy Lawrence pretty much summed it up in the following song:

Time marches on, time marches on.
South moves north, North moves south
A star is born, a star burns out.
the only thing that stays the same
is everything changes, everything changes...