With global enterprises and entrepreneurial behaviour, hierarchy does not and cannot suffice. Being part of a supportive community becomes the basis for repeated, mutually beneficial transactions. Collaboration becomes the underlying mode of operating. Contracts are incomplete and often only marginally enforceable through judicial processes. Legal systems and ethical systems are often in conflict. Therefore, to interact effectively and efficiently, individuals must sense that they are part of a community that cares, protects, and ensures legitimate behaviour on the part of others. Trust, caring, agreed-upon standards for performance, and agreed-upon sanctions are the lubricant easing the friction inherent in free exchange. Building a sense of community is a leadership task. Learning to live as part of a community that is dispersed, asynchronous, and diverse is one of the initiatives that shapes character as well as knowledge. Such a community is created and linked by the technology that is evolving.

These four challenges for the future are mutually reinforcing. Scholars and practitioners who attempt to deal with one of the challenges without under- standing the others do so at their own peril. Entrepreneurship creates the technology and is enabled by it. Communities that form across traditional boundaries enable globalization and enable growth through entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurs build community by managing networks rather than hierarchies and by reinforcing the community through celebration and reinvestment in other community members’ new ideas. They share the rewards of innovation with customers, suppliers, and other partners in the enterprise in order to assure cooperation.

In the old days, OK the 1990’s the need for Change in organizations was infrequent. The Change was almost predictable, large organisations could adapt to it; you had time to adjust your operating model to remain competitive.

That time is over and is noticeable in the prevalence of the number of articles discussing organisational agility. Back then when the business environment was predictable (and maybe easier), the process of ‘managing change’ typically was controlled and driven by ‘the experts’. Obviously, there were many reasons why we heavily relied on the ‘experts’;

• The expert has the experience to understand the impact of the required change. Whilst this might have been true when knowledge was scarce and in the hands of the few, today reality is different.
• How the corporate world reacts to failure. When changed are implemented unsuccessfully without experts would result in being ‘fired’. Therefore, to avoid delivering bad news in times of crisis or tarnishing your image, we tend to call-in the experts to play bad-cop. In many cases completely outsource the job to the experts is career suicide as managers are expected to be capable to project manage.

As dealing with change is now a regular activity, leading it becomes a skill to hone, an internal capacity to master.

Back then, the need for change was cyclical and gradual. Today, as we are witnessing with the emergence of new technology and knowledge, change is constant. This has tremendous implications for the organization. This means that change is something everyone must be very comfortable with both as an employee and as leaders. As dealing with change becomes a regular activity, leading it becomes a skill to hone, an internal capacity to master. Clearly, change implementation, strategy execution, or whatever sophisticated name associated with the process, can no longer be outsourced to the expert only; it must be woven into the organisations operating model. In the future, “the way we do things here” should be a phrase that explains how complacency is not acceptable. Leading change is now a core competency and like all core competencies, you need to keep the intelligence in-house.