Posted tagged ‘agile’

So, what does it mean?

January 22, 2009

The below video is an excellent reminder of how quickly and powerfully the world is changing.

After watching this, I had a few thoughts relating to nonprofits and technology when they showed that final question, “So what does it all mean?”

  • Flexibility and adaptability are key
  • In the coming years, many potential donors could increasingly be foreign, speaking English as a second language, with differing cultures and values.
  • With such rapidity of change, a personal connection and individual human stories become more vital than ever.
  • If your systems, software and processes are not agile and adaptable, they will be obsolete.
  • No one can predict what 2 years will bring, much less 10. Couple that with the proliferation of communications channels and we begin to see that there will be no ‘dominate’ channel. Facebook and Twitter are not the future, but are important so long as people use them to communicate.
  • The Internet is not a channel, it is a technology for information and application sharing based on a protocol that contains countless communication channels.
  • The nature of human beings does not change nor do basic needs (survival, love, purpose, creativity), but the avenues and means of meeting those needs is changing more rapidly than ever before in human history.

In one sentence, the agility to be continually learning and innovating is essential in the 21st century. New models are emerging everywhere and old axioms, though still proclaimed, are already dead.  If your processes, systems, software and operational ethos are not dynamic, open and collaborative, you will not thrive and may not even survive. But, if they are, you will not only be successful, you will be a catalyst in one of the most exciting moments in human history.