A lot of the work in, say, construction or restaurants involves visual and motor flexibility. It also requires adaptability, in terms of answering questions, giving people directions, or taking orders.
When you ask people, 'What's the opposite of fragile?,' they tend to say robust, resilient, adaptable, solid, strong. That's not it. The opposite of fragile is something that gains from disorder.
You can't build an adaptable organization without adaptable people - and individuals change only when they have to, or when they want to.
To create an organization that's adaptable and innovative, people need the freedom to challenge precedent, to 'waste' time, to go outside of channels, to experiment, to take risks and to follow their passions.
I thought we'd just sequence the genome once and that would be sufficient for most things in people's lifetimes. Now we're seeing how changeable and adaptable it is, which is why we're surviving and evolving as a species.
We moved a lot. I went to nine schools in four states before I was 14. It gave me tough skin, exposed me to lots of different kinds of people and made me somewhat adaptable.
The movie adaptations of stage musicals that I've seen, without exception, in my opinion don't work. A lot of people would disagree with me.
I've done my share of period stuff. I'm not sure why, but people say I have a period face. The bread and butter of British TV is Jane Austen adaptations and bridges and bonnets and boats and horses.
The most effective adaptation of racism over time is the idea that racism is conscious bias held by mean people.
I worked at an old folks' home once in Harlem, and I was an activities volunteer. I used to do all these plays with the old people. I did 'The Wizard of Oz;' it was adapted. There was a guy there who played the harmonica, so we had an overture, and The Wizard was 96.
Young people have a marvelous faculty of either dying or adapting themselves to circumstances.
One of the most difficult things for people who have been successful in sports is adapting to the daily world where you can't get an answer from someone until 5 o'clock tomorrow. There is always an excuse. Living 40 or 50 years like that doesn't get too exciting after a while.
We humans can get used to anything. It really is remarkable. The problem is that we often use this glorious ability of ours to stay stuck in mediocrity. Oh, the years we waste adapting to lousy marriages, soul-sucking jobs, being friends with people who are rude to waitresses.
'The Daily Beast' competes in the highly Darwinian media world filled with hyper-smart, highly adaptive, tool-using people with opposable thumbs.
The Philippines is strategically located and blessed with the greatest resource: its people, who are hard-working, very loyal, and very adaptive.
Pfizer's actually teamed up with my nonprofit organization, which is called Adaptive Action Sports. I cofounded this organization in 2005 to help people with physical disabilities get involved in action sports, go snowboarding, skateboarding.
The technology that lets many people use the same radio channel at the same time is called smart antenna technology or adaptive array technology or interference mitigation. This technology uses computer processors to take the signals from multiple antennas at each location and sorts the various signals out so they don't interfere with each other.
Effective use of Braille is as important to the blind as independent mobility, knowledge in the use of adaptive technology, and the core belief that equality, opportunity and security are truly possible for all people who are blind.
We're a social species, and we want to get along with the people we like and who are like us. That's just good adaptive behaviour. We're more likely to accept something if we hear it from a friend, whereas we're sceptical of people who are not like us - which is what leads to racism, nationalism, sexism and all forms of bigotry.
As we get older, people close down. We get less adaptive, less flexible - literally. Curiosity can diminish, and you want safety. You want what you know.
