Are You a Dolphin, or a Dodo?

I've been doing a lot of reading recently. Lots around social media of course, but also other things. I came across an article about dolphins. I love dolphins; so elegant and intelligent. Reading the article led to thoughts on survival, evolution, adaptation to new environments...and from there on to new workspaces, adapting to new technologies...you see where I'm going with this...it got me thinking.

Dolphins were apparently land mammals who took to the sea around 50 million years ago, probably in response to new predators on land, or increased food sources in the sea. Whatever the reasons, they evolved and adapted to their new environment in many ways and the species survived!

By way of comparison, I looked up the dodo bird. Obviously an animal that is extinct. It lived on the island of Mauritius with no natural predators. It had no reason to evolve the means to protect itself. However, when humans and their livestock and other animals did move into its lands, the dodo couldn't adapt fast enough and so dodo numbers dwindled and finally disappeared. It didn't adapt and the species didn't survive.

My question then is...

Are you a dolphin or a dodo?

Do you move with the times, keeping up to date on all the latest tech, or at least on the tech that can help you to run your life and your business smoothly? Or do you struggle to keep up? Or worse, do you bury your head in the sand and try not to think about how far things are moving ahead without you?

In this fast moving and fast changing world, it takes a lot of effort to be a dolphin. You need to read, practice, experiment, get training. Trust me, it's worth it. It sounds like a lot of effort, but in the end, the effort you take in the short term will make life and business easier in the long run.

In terms of the technologies we create to make our day to day lives easier, more fun, or more interesting, there's online banking, self checkout machines in supermarkets, social media apps, online shopping, etickets for flights and events, car gadgets/onboard computers, satellite navigation systems, digital cameras, computers, mobile phones, bluetooth, QR codes, smart TVs, blu ray players, mp3 players, e-readers..the list goes on and I'm sure you can think of others. Some of the latest stuff I've seen are contactless payment cards, fingerprint recognition log in, cashless buses, and have you seen that you can now scan your credit card into some shopping sites to store your credit card details for future transactions?

We're moving towards a cashless society. I love it! All this papery stuff seems so last century! 

I love all this tech. Some I can't imagine my life without and others are just exciting to me, Google Glass for example.

But these are the same things that frighten the life out of some people I know. They struggle to understand how it works, always needing someone else to make online bookings for them and never braving the supermarket self-service tills.

In the world of marketing, things have changed massively too. Where we used to do direct mail shots, flyer mail outs and post catalogues to customers. Now we do email marketing, send electronic flyers and have websites and e-cataglogues for online shopping.

We used to communicate by letter, which moved to email, which branched out to chat rooms, which has now moved in large part to social media and online forums.

Businesses Beware

Gone are the days of headed paper, mail shots & cheques. The days of email marketing, social media and online banking are here. If you still pay your invoices by cheque, send direct mail marketing shots and have no social media presence, you could be on the road to extinction. I know it's hard, but please try to keep up, get some training, or risk being hopelessly left behind.

Be more dolphin!

Until next time...

Lorraine :-)