Whiplash summary

Do you ever feel like time is moving faster and faster, like the last year zipped by much more quickly than the year before it? Well, you might be onto something; a quick glance at earth’s history shows that the world is, in fact, changing at an unprecedented rate.

To make this clearer, let’s imagine the history of earth as a single calendar year, with the formation of our planet occurring on January 1. It wasn’t until December 1 that the first land animals appeared. And it took until 11:50 p.m. on December 31 for our hominid ancestors to start walking upright. On New Year’s Eve, less than a second before midnight, recorded history begins.

It used to be that authorities ruled the roost. From royal families to spiritual leaders and politicians to major corporations, the people with the power called the shots. But this is about to change, and all because of the unprecedented access to information that we have today.

Prior to the advent of the internet, the public had limited access to information – and this access was granted or denied by the people in power. By and large, the public accepted the information given to them; they obeyed orders and rarely challenged the official narrative. Today, however, the internet has made information available to virtually everyone, and the veracity of official claims can easily be scrutinized and challenged.

Do you think you could predict which of the world’s ten most active volcanoes will erupt next? Sounds impossible, right? Well, it is. Nonetheless, many organizations still saddle a handful of their top people with a comparable responsibility: predicting which events (be it a natural disaster or a shift in the market) are most likely to occur, and then allocating resources accordingly.

This method – putting resources where top people think they are most likely to be needed – is called the push approach. But this method is inflexible and sluggish. All feedback from lower-level employees must first move up through the tiers of management before it can be considered and acted upon. And only then can someone at the top address the issue.

Did you have a favorite activity as a child? Whatever it was, let’s imagine you liked to draw. What would have happened if, while at school, you refused to set aside your crayons when the bell rang for class? You likely would have been disciplined in some way. Now let’s imagine you’d been allowed to draw and had gone on to become the next Picasso . . .

The point is that rules can suffocate possibility. If everyone went about their normative days in predictably normative ways, innovation would cease entirely. That’s why breaking the rules is sometimes better than following them.

Which plant do you think would stand a better chance of weathering every storm: an oak or a reed? Most people would choose that symbol of strength, the oak. But even an oak can be broken by a strong enough wind, whereas the reed, supple and slim, is certain to bounce back after the storm.

Modern companies should do away with oak-like tendencies and try to be more flexible, like the reed.