The Nature of Change Has Changed. Insightful and Timely Understanding of What People Feel, and Think Is More Important than Ever

Technology is transforming industry after industry, perhaps none so much as the media landscape which has, since the millennium, seen traditional and hierarchical, mass media upended by flatter, networks, interconnectivity across the globe, spurning social media, and narratives that have now become the mainstay of people’s lives. Tracking such narratives enables one to understand what people themselves feel is important to them. This has never been more important than at the present time. The daily lives of everyone were rapidly transformed by the unprecedented challenges of COVID-19, which for 2 years saw many different approaches by different country leaders. In general, it demonstrated that systems were broken and leadership lacking when most needed. Volatility, uncertainty, and indeed fear were compounded by miscommunications and a lack of clarity. The pandemic, coupled with the unwarranted invasion of Ukraine, has further adversely affected peoples’ outlook with rapidly changing priorities by (new) leaders, who are now seeing further societal turmoil in people’s daily lives as mental health, basic living costs…, add to the already heightened uncertainty. Leaders must accept and embrace that not only is the rate of change accelerating, but the nature of change itself is changing and having a transformational effect on people and institutions. This paper shares the results of tracking key lifestyle narratives, in A Virtual Living Lab, from before COVID-19 to September 2022, when most countries had removed their pandemic restrictions. It shows how investigating “important” narratives, those with utility, can enable people to track and respond to what people think is important by “engaging with engagement” that already exists in current social media environments that describe what people think/feel and can lead to behaviour change. Paradoxically, with media fragmentation, there are many like-minded, micro-communities that have deeper engagement and thus, the potential to create competence with the apparent complexity of modern living.