When it comes to ‘Working Smart,’ speed really matters, as does being willing and open to embrace new ideas and tactics about the workplace and how your company can adapt.

We all know that the pace of change is dizzying and all the speakers at Vision Monday’s Global Leadership Summit addressed many of their messages to the way in which every dimension of business today (and every type of business, including health and vision care) is mandated to think differently.

Most changes have been spurred by consumers who themselves are being influenced and enamored of and living with technology. And, indeed, Jason Dorsey’s illuminating look at the differences in attitudes and experience of Gen Z, Millennials, Xers and Boomers hammered home those difference—among consumers as customers and as employees.

The complex tech-driven game-changer that is “telehealth” was part of a three-dimensional session which included telemedciine experts from outside of vision care, a range of eye text and eye exam technologies which promise to change notions of access to eyecare for many, and a panel of optical professionals who share how they are studying the subject (please learn even more from each of those professionals in our Special Report in this edition of VM and online, too).

Bob Safian, the award-winning former editor of Fast Company and now the founder of The Flux Group, succinctly framed the issue. “Building a cadence of change in your organization” is essential. “Agility and the mindset of owners, leaders and all employees” is what enables some companies to operate with “the whirlwind of change” that we’re in the middle of right now.

But, he reminded everyone, even in this era where digital technology seems to upend everything, “it’s the human connection among individuals, teams and leaders, which drives creativity and solutions and new approaches.”

I encourage you to take some time, read the comprehensive recaps. Go through the speakers’ presentations and see some comments from the video highlights.

The VM Summit’s themes are not just program titles. But real-life trends that are sometimes disruptive and many times instructional to everyone in this inter-related, complex optical community. As National Vision’s Reade Fahs reminded us, we are a “community,” people and businesses with shared interests and concerns and a common mission to help all people see a better future.

maxelrad@jobson.com