In business – and life – there are few things as certain as change. This week, there was a change in the composition of the FTSE top 100 companies. Of the current list, only around half of these companies existed before 1972. Since, over many years, companies devote significant resources to staff learning and development activities with the aim of remaining in business, it might appear that something is not quite right somewhere.

The reason why things – and, thus, the future for both businesses and people – are not completely predictable is ‘change’. That’s why businesses need managers: to shape and govern change. By its very nature, change is unpredictable, so managers are constantly searching for tools to help them deal with it and give them the edge over their competitors. This accounts for the various fashions that have occurred in business thinking and in learning and development over the years – from management by objectives and transactional analysis of the 1970s to today’s contingency and chaos theories of management.

Comment: So, are large numbers of companies now failing because of ignorance of, or apathy to, change? I, for one, neither know nor care.