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Published January 2006

Changes Ahead

  

  Jay Cross

Is your organization ready for massive change? Have your people learned how to cope with increasingly fast cycle times, escalating ambiguity and avalanches of incoming information? Do you have a Plan B if your current structure proves too brittle?

Futurists warn that we are rounding the knee of an exponential curve of communications, business and technology. It's hard to imagine change of this magnitude. It reminds me of an experience I had on a recent trip to Abu Dhabi.

Camel stew is delicious, so I tore another chunk from the platter in front of me. The fellow across the table was eating Omani lobster. He was the first non-native to be awarded citizenship in the United Arab Emirates.

Abu Dhabi was settled in 1793. Life was hard. Camel herding, fishing and small-scale agriculture were the primary economic activities. Pearl diving became lucrative at the beginning of the century, but was knocked out in the 1930s by the one-two punch of global depression and the Japanese cultured pearl industry.

In 1958, oil was discovered. The United Arab Emirates sits atop 10 percent of the world's proven oil reserves. The late Sheik Zayed put the United Arab Emirates in the fast lane, and you can almost see it growing daily.

Fifty years ago, a few scattered huts made from palm fronds sat on the land now occupied by row after row of modern skyscrapers. Camel paths turn into high-speed freeways, dazzling skyscrapers sprout like weeds and green trees and gardens abound. Dubai is about as far from Abu Dhabi as San Francisco from San Jose, and the roads through both the United Arab Emirates and Silicon Valley are bordered with fancy buildings marked Intel, IBM, Oracle, SAP, Microsoft and HP.

I saw a woman covered head to toe in black, but with a cell phone held to her ear. Some women wore all black with total facial coverings, some wore brass nose guards, some half-veils and some wore no facial coverings at all. It reminds me how slowly things progress. But that is the wrong message. Things that look old-fashioned to my inexperienced eyes must appear like science fiction to locals my age. Ten years ago, a woman would not have been allowed out of her house alone.

Had I been born in Abu Dhabi, I would have grown up without electricity or running water in a house without a foundation. I wouldn't have gone to high school because the country didn't have any. My father would have herded camels, like his father before him, and his father before him, going back to ancient times.

By the time I was 35 years old, my life would have begun to change. Leaders were importing foreigners to build roads, buildings and infrastructure. By the time I was 50, I would have had a cell phone, microwave oven, condo overlooking the Gulf, flat-screen television, sleek Mercedes, Philippe Patek wristwatch, four-wheel drive dune buggy, kid attending Oxford and several million dollars in my personal bank account.