The One Minute Manager, the best-selling management book of all time, was written more than 25 years ago. Pause for a moment and think about the changes in the world in the last 25 years. It’s a bit mind-boggling when you consider the depth and complexity of the transformation of our daily lives. The world has changed and the world of work has certainly changed with it.

There are six categories we can take a look at that tell the story pretty well.

communications

You can instantly connect anytime, anywhere with almost anyone via your cell phone, Skype, the Internet, PDA, or even through your Twitter or blog. Blogs and sites like Facebook, which now has more than 100 million users, keep you connected with friends, family AND customers. On most days in 2008, 230,000%2B of new users signed up for MySpace. If it were a country, it would be the 11th largest in the world. The number of text messages sent each day exceeds the total population of the earth. YouTube isn’t just for crazy teen antics, it’s a business tool featuring thousands of how-to and product videos. And you can be whoever you want to be in virtual worlds like SecondLife.com, where IBM hosts internal meetings and Harvard now offers courses for credit.

Information

Now you’re just a click or two away from getting an answer to almost any question. Your morning newspaper is now an RSS feed that goes directly to your PDA so you get the news you want at all times and even get alerts about information important to you (like sports scores!). There were more than 2.7 billion searches on Google in January 2008.

Wikipedia has become the world’s largest reference website, attracting almost 700 million users in 2008. It is written collaboratively by volunteers from around the world. Today, there are more than 75,000 active contributors working on more than 10,000,000 articles in more than 250 languages. As of October 1, there are 2,581,268 articles in English.

Blogging has become a way of life for thousands of people. As of December 2007, the Technorati blog search engine crawled more than 112 million blogs. There are more people blogging today (31 million) than were connected to the internet 10 years ago.

LinkedIn now has more than 24 million users who connect you with just about anyone you want to reach and help you discover who works where and what.

speed and size

Faster and smaller is also a new way of life nowadays. Just when we think it can’t get any faster, it does. Instant sometimes seems too long and mobile phone designers and manufacturers are now faced with the dilemma that they have become too small. (How many of you have a hard time pressing the right buttons on your cell phone?).

It took 410 years to invent a photocopier using the movable type method. And only 20 to design the modern computer from the first mainframe.

Distance has been removed as a limit. Teams can work 24/7 around the world. You are in Paris… You decide to use your credit card. Getting approved for credit involves a 46,000-mile journey through phones and computers…and in a matter of two seconds you’re all set. If there is a minor problem in the system, the ten second delay feels like forever!

Technology

The ENIAC, commonly regarded as the first modern computer, was built in 1944. It took up more space than an 18-wheeler truck trailer, weighed more than 17 midsize cars, and consumed 140,000 watts of electricity. Computers are more affordable and more portable than ever. Computing power is now 8,000 times cheaper than it was 30 years ago. If we had similar progress in automotive technology, today you could buy a luxury car for around $2. You would travel at the speed of sound and get about 600 miles on a thimble of gas.

Today’s average consumer uses more computing power on their wrists than existed in the entire world before 1961. Look around you. Is there anything that has not been significantly impacted by technological advances?

Competition and Clients

Another key difference in our world today is the removal of barriers to entry for most companies and products. The ability to instantly share information around the world along with the ability to easily access it means it’s less complicated than ever to start a business. New garage businesses look no differently to their customers across the web than large brick and mortar structures.

Coopetition is more common today due to overlapping businesses, industries, and products. Suppliers are also customers, they are also competitors. We have to constantly examine and re-examine our views on who we serve and how.

Over a million products are available to the average shopper today. From the early 1970s to the late 1990s, the number of vehicle models available to choose from increased from 140 to 260. The number of Frito-Lay chip varieties increased from 10 to 78. Over-the-counter pain relievers they increased from 17 to 141. In January 2007, it was reported that there were 106,875,138 websites with domain names and content on them, compared to just 18,000 websites in August 1995.

And customers don’t just find products online, they turn to the internet for every aspect of their lives. One in seven married couples in 2007 went online.

And finally, Generations and diversity

The United States has four generations working for the first time in history. The differences in values, needs, wants, and desires are vast, providing us with almost endless perspectives on every aspect of our business, product, and service.

Diversity, including race, age, ethnicity, political and religious beliefs, as well as gender, is prevalent in most communities and businesses, especially in the US.

So what is critical to being a great manager or leader in today’s world? You have to have a more complete set of skills, abilities and traits. EQ (emotional intelligence) and IQ are critical, it’s not an either/or proposition. Today it is clearly an equation and/both.

To keep up, a leader and manager today has to DO good on the following:

• Go back to basics when everything around you veers you toward complexity.
• Make strategic planning a way of life in your organization
• Set clear expectations of what excellence looks like
• Constantly communicate about your strategies and excellence
• Create a high-performance culture that supports your strategies and makes them happen
• Provide ongoing feedback
• Constantly learning and unlearning

What remains… what evolves

Certain aspects and behaviors of leaders and managers that were important twenty-five years ago are still critical today and will probably still be important 100 years from now. These include acting with integrity, leading by example, developing talent, and ensuring customer satisfaction/loyalty.

However, there are big differences between the old style of managing and directing and the new idea of ​​leading and inspiring. Today’s managers and leaders are faced with a whole new set of expectations in how they motivate the people who work with or follow them, setting the tone for most other aspects of what they do. People today not only don’t want to be managed, but in most cases, they just don’t want to be. Today’s employee wants to be managed. They want to participate and participate in all aspects of their work. Creating a two-way relationship is critical, especially considering that many knowledge workers know more about what they’re doing than their boss.

Another significant shift for today’s managers and leaders is the need to think globally. The impact of globalization has affected all aspects of business. Appreciating and taking advantage of diversity is an additional change that correlates with our shrinking world; the vast expansion of companies spans seas, cultures and religions. In addition to these actions and focus areas, today’s leaders and managers must be more innovative and proactive, anticipating problems and opportunities, as well as entirely new markets and products.

How do you hold up as a manager or leader today?

Focus on continuous learning and unlearn There are almost no jobs left that will stay the same over time and the demands on leaders and managers continue to evolve. The really great ones are constantly learning and developing and have the following characteristics in common. They:

• I like to control things. They are motivated and motivated to constantly improve, knowing full well that they will not and should not be perfect.
• They are observant and flexible. They can consider multiple perspectives to create general guidelines that help them make sense of their surroundings.
• Focus on problem solving. They view current problems from the perspective of making things better rather than blaming or worrying. His way of thinking is characterized by a balance between the ability to visualize what could or could be and an effective day-to-day approach to doing the right things. They can exude complexity.
• They are self-aware. They constantly work to become even more aware of their own intentions, as well as their impact on others. They admit mistakes and learn from them.
• They are specific, direct and honest with others. They expose any agenda they have and use good listening skills to really listen to what others have to say rather than simply plan their next response.
• Have a wide range of interests. They are genuinely curious about others. They are able to easily make comparisons while seeing and appreciating the complexity of the world.
• Think strategically. They are able to see, understand and appreciate the current state, as well as see possibilities. When dealing with today’s problems, they operate from a long-term, broad perspective rather than taking a narrow view or focusing solely on short-term implications. They are able to gather information and make decisions in a timely manner.
• They are action oriented. They get things done, making timely decisions.

More Than a Minute provides a guide. I constantly note in the book that there is no one right way to do all the things we talk about as important to success. There are advantages and disadvantages to almost every approach. Make sure you make informed decisions and are clear about the pros and cons.