Growing up, I was taught a memory technique of creating a word from the letters of what you wanted to remember. The first I recall was \u201cHomes\u201d which was the great lakes in the Midwest \u2013 Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, and Superior.<\/p>\n
Businesses rely on these acronyms all the time, creating unique ones for department names, product offering, etc. Some became actual words such as Scuba (self-contained underwater breathing apparatus), Laser (Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation), and Snafu (look it up if you need to).<\/p>\n
One of the most common acronyms in business is SWOT \u2013 Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats \u2013 as a way to analyze the competitive position by looking both inside and at the external competitive environment.<\/p>\n
During a very impactful IBM planning session, (where I was fortunate to be one of a few outsiders invited to), I was introduced to STEP \u2013 Social, Technical, Economic, Political \u2013 as a way of understanding and building context to the subject being analyzed. These are the realms in which new norms and change happen, where Janus Moments<\/a><\/em> occur.<\/p>\n Larry Downs states in the Law of Disruption<\/a> \u201csocial, political, and economic systems change incrementally, but technology changes exponentially.\u201d This is true and recognizable in how technology causes disruption in the other realms \u2013 such as changes in law (texting and driving), work patterns (work from home), and business models (open software development).<\/p>\n And this disruption is true for events as well, where technology\u2019s impact on content creation and distribution, attendee experience, and the definition of an event (i.e. \u201cvirtual events\u201d) have all recently changed.<\/p>\n But Janus Moments<\/a> can, and will, come from any realm and at any speed.<\/p>\n On September 11th<\/sup>, 2001<\/a>, all norms related to air travel, public safely, and \u201csuspicious behavior\u201d changed in a moment. How many events had metal detector screening the day before? How many did the week after?<\/p>\n On September 17th<\/sup>, 2011 norms related to equality, protest, and politics changed almost as quickly as 1,000 joined the first official day of Occupy Wall Street<\/a>.<\/p>\n On the other hand, it has taken since 1936 (the first public video telephone service<\/a>) for video conferencing to become a norm due to economics and social factors.<\/p>\n