The Social Media Revolution…(You must be insane if you don't watch this)
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If you’ve been involved in internet or network marketing for a while, you will probably have heard of the following, attributed to Albert Einstein:
"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results".
What you might not be aware of, is that Einstein, towards the latter half of his life, doggedly pursued a line of research that was probably doomed never to gain him the dream that he hungered for.
WIthout getting too technical here (I don’t want your eyes to glaze over, after all), Einstein was looking for a way to unite all the different forces of Physics, into one, unified whole.
It was a very noble dream – but one he was never to find the solution to.
What happened, and why did he not succeed?
Well, some would argue that in some way, he did find the answer – albeit a partial realization of his vision. He managed to unify gravity and electromagnetism, and was searching hard to go further with his plan.
But along the way, physicists had discovered some new forces that operated inside the nucleus of each and every atom that makes up you and I.
And Einstein’s theory didn’t really take these extra forces into account.
But he kept going, hoping to find a solution.
So here’s the takeaway for us:
If new insights come along, new data, new ways of doing things (and I’m thinking particularly in a business context here), then you either carry on the way you always have, or you adapt to the new ideas and ways.
If you don’t adapt, you might find that your business shrivels, diminishes, or even dies.
This was the frightening possibility that some people had to confront the last time there was such a fundamental shift away from existing ways of living and doing business. (I’m talking about the industrial revolution).
In that revolution, the changes happened bit by bit, as it took many years to lay the conduit of change (the railway) across a country.
But this time round, we don’t have the luxury of decades to adapt. The reason for this is that the current revolution that is happening – the social media & information revolution – is occuring at such an incredible rate, that even 2 years is a huge length of time.
When I was a boy, the society and social norms of children and adults was incredibly different. And so too was the world of business. We had mainframe computers and telephones with rotating dials.
And now? Well, it’s hard to know where to stop in terms of technological and social change – and this current revolution is only just revving up into second gear.
So how do businesses survive?
Clearly, following Einstein’s advice might turn out to be a better route than to copy his actions.
Don’t be insane and carry on doing what you’ve always done and expect to get a different result, because you no longer have that luxury.
If you do bury your head and hope you can get away with keeping on doing the same thing, you’ll find that come the day you eventually pop your head out of the sand, your surroundings will be so different, that very few will want what you have to give.
Does this sounds harsh? It’s not meant to be: I’m just making it clear that we are living in a time where the new railroad is being laid down at an incredible rate, and we are in a period of such rapid change, that we need to adapt.
So it’s time to do something different. (Yep, click on that link if you want to know how to take your business onto the new railroad).
Dez.