Reading the Book ‘Team of Teams’ By General Stanley McChrystal was an eye opener for me, more so in the aspect of adaptability. The General explains how he – then commander of the US task force in Baghdad 2003 went with the best team into Iraq hoping to quickly wipe out the Al Queda (AQ1) a terrorist group that was was destabilizing Iraq and causing loss of many lives.

To his surprise, their stay in Iraq didn’t have any positive impact. To the contrary, the attacks from AQ1 kept increasing which made the American task force realise that there was a serious problem.

The answer lay in the cohort of young people within the AQ1 born in the 1990s and 2000s that were considered digital natives in contrast to their digital immigrant parents – like Gen Stanley himself. They had speed and used technology to fasten their operations which was not the case with the American task force which followed traditional hierarchy’s that slowed decisions and operations. Gen Stanley writes that they made a decision to learn from the AQ1 and this worked wonders as they were able to succeed with their mission.

Fast forward, organizations and individuals alike operate in a rather complex and rapidly changing environment. A lot has been said about organizations having to be flexible to survive in current times but I will focus on you and me this time round.

I’ve always been a laid back person that focused more on living a simple life and was never interested in technology reason because its always changing. It puzzled me that I would buy a nice phone and then a year down the road am told its an old model and a new one was on market. I always settled for mediocre technology just because I didn’t want to bother my mind to learn a new thing. When it came to my phone, I ensured all basics were installed; Fatsup, Facebook and that’s it. Other Apps like Instagram, Snapchat I chose to ignore and even convinced myself that thy were a waste of phone space and data.

This has been the case with so many other Apps especially those for shopping and transport. I was hesistant to try them out and would always opt for manual methods, fearing that they could be too complicated for me to learn. I remember being sent for a training in Nairobi and I had to take a cab from the Village Market to 2Rivers Mall every day to run errands. I had been advised to use Uber but I had never used it and I feared trying it out in a foreign country. I therefore kept bothering my fellow trainees in Nairobi to keep assisting me request for cars, something that delayed my movements and inconvenienced others.

When I returned to Uganda, I ensured to install the App and you cant believe what I found. It was so easy to use, very convenient, cheap and a great accountability tool as it would issue receipts. What was I thinking all along, I kept telling myself!!!!!

After this experience I quickly installed the Safe Boda App as well and this really helped as it cut my boda boa expense by half. It’s interesting how naive I had been when I refused to adapt to the new technology that was working within my environment to ease things for me.

Today, am on a steady journey to adapting to new technology that’s always coming up in my spaces. I’ve learnt that technology is an accelerator of things. It makes things happen faster and more efficiently. Currently my transport needs have been made easy with Uber and Safe boda; am intentional while using Watsup to promote my business and also preach the gospel; Zoom has also come in handy during this time when social distance is the norm because of Covid 19 pandemic.

I’ve had to drop the negative attitude I had before as it wasn’t getting me anywhere. I’ve had to change with the times and am happy to report the results are awesome. I’ve seen my business sales increase, got new business contacts and I look forward to many more benefits.

This is me, how about you? How flexible are you when it comes to adapting to new stuff in your environment especially technology? Try to be honest with yourself so you know where you need to improve.