No doubt your organisation has faced significant challenges in the past. If you are not working to reinvent yourself, the market/competition will (painfully) do it for you.
The Rate of Change Is Getting Faster
The world is getting faster, more turbulent and, to a significant degree, far less predictable. If that were not challenging enough, today’s unprecedented level of disruption is about to become significantly more chaotic. Meta breakthroughs in technology mean that we are entering a new era; an age where sweeping and exponential change – along the lines of Moore’s Law – will dominate the business landscape for the foreseeable future.
Millions of workers around the world are about to be replaced by machine learning, robotics and artificial intelligence. People working in call-centres, supermarkets, banks and/or truck drivers are first in line. If it doesn’t involve a high level of skill, innovation, flexibility and/or value-adding interface with the customers – the majority of those who call manufacturing “home” are on a fast track to redundancy. Doctors, lawyers, financial advisors and a host of other professions that rely on “knowledge” are also about to go through a cultural upheaval.
The good news: 60% of the jobs that will be advertised ten years from now don’t currently exist. The not-so-good news: few of those who will be pushed aside in the new machine era will be remotely qualified to do those new jobs. If society is to avoid meltdown; a planned, rather than a headlong rush into new technologies; a new approach to unemployment; and an expansion of the sharing economy … become political imperatives. Today is reality … tomorrow is a choice.
We are quickly reaching the point where not only is tomorrow’s possibility difficult to understand … but we are about to cross a threshold where it will be beyond our capability to understand. If this all sounds depressing, spare a thought for a young millennial joining the workforce today.
John O. Burdett is founder of Orxestra® Inc. He has extensive international experience as a senior executive. As a consultant he has worked in more than 40 countries for organisations that are household names. John has worked on organisation culture for some of the world’s largest organisations. His ongoing partnership with TRANSEARCH International means that his thought leading intellectual property, in any one year, supports talent management in many hundreds of organisations around the world.
