A constant evolution is critical for technology, organizations, and individuals - and “making things better” is the most noble goal that we can have. Of course, it’s not always easy and not always fun: inertia is a strong force and the status quo is almost always more comfortable than the vast unknown of change.
Throughout my career, I’ve been fortunate to have been involved with some major changes in the technology industry; the shift from mainframe to client-server, from desktop to web, from commercial to open-source, waterfall to agile, and now from data-center to the cloud. Likewise, I’ve also been involved in some major changes in the organizations where I’ve worked; small private companies to large public corporations, commercial enterprises to non-profits. In some cases, the change has been successful (sometimes wildly so), and in many others it’s not managed to hold. But from the largest technology disruption to the most specific process improvement, the attributes of successful change are the same; clear direction and precision in details balanced with emotion, inspiration, and passion. I’ve seen the same in everything from trying to change an organization’s culture of making decisions to changing the way a software developer manages source code! And I love being at the center of it, both when it succeeds and even when it struggles.