One of the fascinating things about working in IT is change.

 

Technologies mature, business processes speed up, communication mediums merge, and the world gets smaller.

 

For business, the ‘IT Project’ is the quintessential agent of change – and many organisations do ‘change’ badly.  This is the area that is the focus of much of my time and energy – improving the ability of organisations to execute change.

 

But it is often the smaller, subtler examples of change that frequently catch my attention and cause me to pause.  A recent article in the Australian IT provided such an example.

 

The article, Mobile devices give wristwatches the wind-up, describes how for many (principally the generations younger than mine) the wearing of a watch is becoming increasingly rare:

 

"In a survey last year, investment bank Piper Jaffray found that almost two-thirds of teens never wear a watch, and only about one in 10 wears one daily."

"Experian Simmons Research also discovered that, while Americans spent more than $US5.9 billion on watches in 2006, that figure was down 17 per cent compared with five years earlier."

 

The reason for this … the proliferation of time:

"Elliott, who is 27, is much more likely to get the time from the clock in her car, the one on her cable television box or mobile phone, or from the bottom right-hand of her computer at the University of Kentucky, where she works."

 

This is a behavioural trend that I have noticed but not realised its significance – my phone now automatically synchronises with the network provider – my PC and laptop similarly synchronise more accurately and regularly than my expensive (for 10 years ago!) analogue wristwatch.

 

Earth shattering development? No. But … if someone had told me when I bought that watch that wearing a such watch would become a thing of the past – would I have given them much credence?

 

As observed by James Hoopes, history and society professor from Babson College, Massachusetts:

"…we live in an increasingly synchronised world"

“Historically, the obsession with synchronisation took hold in the railroad era, when watches were often kept in a pocket”

“By World War I, watches began moving to the wrist for convenience. “

“In the age of globalisation, synchronisation has increased in scope.”