OUR NEXT LEADERS: CHILDREN OF CHAOS 

Way back in the 1980s, during the last days of the industrial revolution, many still remembered a phrase from earlier years. It was really common in the 1960s and 1970s. When things got too hectic then (today's equivalent would be tranquility of unknown proportions), people would say "Stop the world, I want to get off."

Today, as we whirl along at speeds and rates of change accelerating exponentially, some simply can't stand life in the crystal lane (two over from the "fast' lane). Others buffeted in the new maelstrom find it exciting, challenging and rewarding. They are tomorrow's leaders -- the children of chaos.

What people today find chaotic will tomorrow seem peaceful. Remember how in the 1960s Beatle music seemed raucous while today much of it seems subdued? Generally, only those raised in an accelerating environment learn how to run at the new speeds and how to handle the rapidly emerging technologies of the times. Very few from the recent past are managing to keep up, never mind move ahead. Those who do become the mentors of the future.

Industry is currently crying for executives who can thrive on change. They are the very few. Most executives were raised in the days of the specialist, in the age of credentialism, when a piece of paper said you could do this or that. Now, with knowledge doubling every 18 months, no school can keep up with such change. No one can issue credentials for that which has not yet been invented. Orville Wright didn't know he was an aeronautical engineer until the day after he made that historic flight at Kitty Hawk in 1903.

New fields are opening up almost daily. Europe and North America no longer have all the knowledge and all the money. Times have changed and the game has changed. Asia is moving faster. As Germany merges and older, out-dated East German industries collapse and die as if dynamited from within, totally new, highly sophisticated industries will spring up utilizing the well-educated east German work force. These organizations will, within the decade, be more modern than those that are spawning them today from West Germany.

Meanwhile in North America, because of the wealth created during the Industrial Age, bureaucratic and union restrictions hold a large portion of their countries and industries hostage, insisting on maintaining old work rules from another era thus preventing industry from keeping up to the required rate of change. Death that lingers has the same result; the pain is dragged out over a longer period of time. The CEOs of such companies managed instead of leading. They managed themselves to death.

True leaders disrupt and often make others uncomfortable. They are always seeing in change, opportunity. The more conservative the company or organization, the more resistance to such change. Then because those companies or organizations didn't keep up, they fail.

Bureaucracy today is dead. Admittedly, some governments and industries haven't yet realized they suffer from the industrial equivalent of AIDS, but it is sinking in more and more each day. Industrial systems aren't working anymore. Smaller, younger, more agile companies are stealing their markets. Why are 46 percent of all companies on the Fortune 500 list in 1979 not there anymore?

Ninety percent of all the goods and services that will be available at the end of this century haven't yet been developed. Young companies usually move fastest in the crystal lane. Most older companies will vanish.

Chrysler, as we know it, will be gone by the middle of the 1990s.

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