One of my all-time favorite quotes, it is not my top all-time favorite quote but it’s up there with about three others. I like this quote a lot because it is refers to the one thing that I talk about. I mean I harp on it. I beat it down and try to cram it down people’s throat. I do now once you cram stuff down people’s throat you cannot make them accept it but I do hope it at least gets people thinking. If I don’t get them thinking, I hope to at least raise an eyebrow or two. That quote is by General Eric Shinseki, former Chief of Staff United States Army:
“If you don’t like change you’re going to like irrelevance even less.”
“If you don’t like change you’re going to like irrelevance even less.” I think that about sums it up as General Shinseki says change is going to happen. You have got to either embrace it or accept the fact that it (change) is here. It is coming, it is going to happen and if you don’t change, guess what? That’s right you are going to fall by the wayside. You are going to be sent to the side of the road. You are going to be one of those people that sits there and watches the parade go by and then wonder what happened. That is the truth. That’s your destiny. It does not get any truer than that. You are going to become irrelevant. Change is coming and I’m seeing it all over the place. I am seeing it everywhere. Now more so than ever and it’s technology is doing that technology is driving that change.
What do we do? Well, we can sit here and put our head in the sand and expect that it’s not going to happen to us. I guarantee you it’s going to happen to us. It is going to happen. Every industry is going to be impacted by change and if you do not believe me you have got your head in the sand.
Look at look at what Netflix and Amazon Prime did to Blockbuster. Look at what happened. Where is Blockbuster now? They are gone.
A huge company, a huge organization and now they’re gone. They are gone because they refused to change. They refused to adapt. They had a chance to buy Netflix. They had a chance to buy out Netflix and they chose not to. Now, Blockbuster Video is gone and folks, it is going to happen across a lot of other industries.
It is already happening, now in the food service industry specifically the pizza industry. I saw this commercial earlier this week for the Little Caesars pick up portal. You can order online on your Little Caesars app on your phone and you can pay online. Through the app on the phone, you enter your credit card information or your debit card information. Then you just show up at the store because they don’t deliver. You show up at the store and you go to the portal. You find your little number then you enter the code, the little door will open, that applies to you, and it’s just that simple and you take your pizzas, you leave. You never have to talk to a human being. That is right, you never have to talk to a human being.
AirBnB, look what it is doing to the hospitality industry. Rocket Mortgage; look what it is doing to the home lending industry. Realtor dot com app where you can search by drawing a little circle or draw a pattern that shows you all the homes in that search area. That is going to continue rock the industry. That app and others like it are going to change the real estate business. It does not care what anybody says, the real estate business needs to change. It is going to happen because it is happening already. If somebody is sitting out there not believing that it is not going to happen or think that people will not do that, people won’t allow that. Yet, look at what happened to the horse-drawn carriage, that’s right the automobile industry took care of that.
Now look at what is happening to the driving industry. We are getting driverless vehicles, the consumer will no longer be driving their own vehicles. Sure there might be somebody driving a vehicle but the consumer themselves will not be driving the vehicle. Look at Lyft, at Uber, it is happening.
To continue living a life and a mindset of “oh, it’s not going to happen to my industry” is nonsense. Guess what is going to happen to the pharmaceutical industry, the pharmaceutical business, those pharmacies at Walmart, Walgreens, CVS, Target? The Pharmacy business is going to combine a little AirBnB, a little Rocket Mortgage, and a little Little Caesars. That’s right, what is going to happen, I do not know if you have seen them but there are these little robots that make mixed drinks. In Japan and in the larger cities like Las Vegas in some hotels, they have robots that mix drinks because they know exactly where the vodka is, their mechanical arm goes and pulls it. It knows exactly how much to pour to get two shots of vodka. It knows how to shake, stir whatever you need. It knows how to drop the cherry or the olives into the martini and present it to you.
Guess what is going to happen because it is happening now. It has already happened and it’s going to continue to happen. This coming change is going to rock the pharmacy business and it’s going to rock that industry on its heels.
Folks, while it is quite simple, the problem remains. There are people out there that refuse to accept the fact that it is going to change. While there is always going to be a need for a human. There will always be a need for human but a human to ensure that the machine is still up and running. To ensure that the machine is still doing what it’s supposed to do. Yes, there is going to be a continued need for a human, for the time being. Humans but eventually, we will all putting ourselves out of business, out of a job. Technology is and will be putting everyone else out of business.
Thus, you need to adapt, you need to change, you need to plan and you need to act on that plan. If you do not, I sure do hope you like irrelevance. Relevance and Change is coming and it is going to shape the future. Either you are relevant or you are not relevant and that is all there is to it. It does not matter what you do. It is going to happen and again, it is changing all around you and if you are not seeing the forest for the trees then you get exactly what you deserve.
What are you doing to go with that change that is coming to stay? To remain relevant as opposed to becoming irrelevant? The time to act is now because before you know it, you are going to watch that parade go by and you won’t know what happened.
Personally, I’d much rather be in the parade but then again, that’s just me.