But in a turbulent environment the change is so widespread that it just routes around any kind of central authority. So it is best to manage the bottom-up change rather than try to institute it from the top down.

When a system is in turbulence, the turbulence is not just out there in the environment, but is a part of the organization or organism that you are looking at.

Managers tend to treat organizations as if they are infinitely plastic. They hire and fire, merge, downsize, terminate programs, add capacities. But there are limits to the shifts that organizations can absorb.

The young are always coming up with the good ideas; it's because they waste time. They follow their passion and do something, not looking for a payoff, just doing what's interesting.

Preserve the core, and let the rest flux. In their wonderful bestseller Built to Last, authors James Collins and Jerry Porras make a convincing argument that long-lived companies are able to thrive 50 years or more by retaining a very small heart of unchanging values, and then stimulating progress in everything else. At times "everything" includes changing the business the company operates in, migrating, say, from mining to insurance. Outside the core of values, nothing should be exempt from flux. Nothing.

Any believable prediction will be wrong. Any correct prediction will be unbelievable.

It's generally much easier to kill an organization than to change it substantially.