How can businesses manage discomfort caused by rapid technological change?

Something very unpleasant is happening to us all: rapid change.

Rapid change is very uncomfortable for humans so we do anything we can to avoid it, particularly if it strikes at the heart of our sense of self, status, affections or aspirations.

The speed of technology development is always hard to manage for humans but the speed of (Gen)AI -driven change is truly startling. Here are some examples.

1. Investors that I meet are struggling to find stability in this AI quicksand. Where will the equity value rest in the future? There is so much noise to sift through. They don't know where to invest, because the market is shifting around and new entrants appear every week. Are their existing SaaS investments compromised? How should their portfolio companies use AI? Those that are investing (perhaps from FOMO) are pushing up huge valuations. Some of those, to me, look very top heavy.

2. Companies cannot keep up with change. I meet with C-level execs in mid-market (lots of them, every week). It is very difficult for them to maintain a current view on the technology and run their business. GenAI will likely refactor their entire business but there is no time to plan.

3. Individuals are struggling with the idea that their hard won skills might be redundant in the next 12 months. For example, I think developers that don't use AI, or raise the bar in other areas, will be left behind. Dev teams in the future will be much smaller for the same throughout. The tools are not perfect but just wait until ChatGPT 5 arrives. And then 6. And then 7. Don't base career decisions on now, base them on what's coming next.

(It's not just developers, it's any information worker who follow rules-based patterns. I count myself in that group.)

The biggest challenge with technology change is never the technology.

It's the humans who have expectations of something other.