Prepare for "What Will Be" not "What Was"

It is envisioned that occupational skills will have a life of one to three years and the average person will experience a major career change from five to seven times in their lifetime. One way to prepare for the future is to envision what careers will be in demand two to four years from the present at the completion of an educational program.  What skills will be needed in the chosen industry at that time.  Examine the trends and consider all the factors that may affect the field.  Example of trends to consider include:  demographics, technology, globalization, domestic economic conditions and policies, environmental issues, cost cutting, and the speed of change itself.

Sample related questions to consider include:

• Is the population aging; if so what products and services might be needed?
• What new technologies are being introduced in the workplace; how are those technologies affect the workers and the skills needed for success?
• The world is transitioning into a global village: how will that affect the industry; is there a new customer base; what new competition will the industry face; will low-cost labor be available globally?
• What domestic economic conditions and policies will affect the industry in the next three to five years; will the changes support or create barriers for the industry?
• Will environmental issues significantly affect the industry; will the changes be supportive or create barriers for the industry?
• The availability of low-cost international labor and products made possible by manufacturing efficiencies is expected to cause pressures to reduce costs; how will that affect the industry?
• The speed of change is expected to be a factor affecting industry and the workplace; how will labor and management cope?

Herman, and Gioia (1998) propose, the progression to this new, corporate way of life will embrace many changes which will affect the strategy of work and wages, quality of life, atmosphere responsibility, social responsibility, and capacity for the human spirit (p. 24).  These authors explored these trends in the new and emerging workplace.  According to a recent study by Response Analysis of Princeton, New Jersey, of 1600 people responding, 52% wanted to be responsible for their work and the results it produced, 42% wanted acknowledgment for their contributions, and 39% wanted their tasks matched to their strengths.  In return, Herman and Gioia (1998) relate, the employees of the future will possess the following qualities:  they will be flexible, creative and motivated toward making a positive difference, and will seek balance and growth and suggest the corporation of the future must be aware of these needs and desires to be successful in the marketplace (pp. 1-5).

Lifelong Learning

Change is everywhere in the world, in companies and in organizations.  Individuals will need to change to keep pace. That means continuous learning and updating an ongoing adjustment to your portfolio of skills and knowledge.   Motivation can come from several benefits: increased job satisfaction, better prospects for work, personal satisfaction, and increased pay. Settings could include:  (1) training at your place of employment; (2) learning at home through audio/video tapes, computer instruction, printed materials; and (3) day or evening courses in the community or at an educational institution.  Before you invest your time and money, thoroughly investigate your options regarding quality and suitability to your needs.  For some programs you may wish to ask about the people who graduated, what type of work they are doing and their salary ranges.  Because of the wide array of programs and courses, you may wish to consult a career counselor.

Challenge, commitment, control and being connected make up the 4 C’s of conquest.  To move forward, you must have a challenge that will stretch your present capabilities.  Irrespective of how nice it would be to have what you desire, nothing will happen unless you make a commitment with your heart and your mind.  You need to take control, to be a proactive rather than a passive learner.  It's hard doing something alone being connected to others for support and encouragement will help you continue to make progress even as you face barriers.

First, you need to do a reality check.  Truthfully, evaluate your current interest in lifelong learning and professional upgrading.  Rate yourself on the scale between high and low.

Desire to learn in order to be ready for the job changes in the future.

                                   High |______|______|______|______| Low

Did you put your mark on either of the first two bars on the high side?  If you didn't, you will need to think seriously about the type of work you are interested in doing and the amount of learning that will be expected of you to keep current.  Are they compatible?  Both you and your employer will become frustrated if the gap between their expectation and your capacity is too large.  You may have other priorities which preclude the dedication necessary.

Service Orientation

Gates (1999) states, "Business is going to change more in the next 10 years than it has in the last fifty," and advises, "If the 1980s were about quality and the 1990s were about re-engineering, the 2000s will be about velocity" (p. xiii).  Cunniff (2000) quotes Alan Blinder, an economist, who concludes the Internet burst on the scene just about the time productivity accelerated in the mid-1990s, but notes that freeing trade has forced a more practical use of resources and intensified competition (p. 4).  Gates (1999) adds "When the increase in velocity of business is great enough, the very nature of business changes."  He explains "A manufacturer or retailer that responds to changes in sales in hours instead of weeks is no longer at heart a product company, but a service company that has a product offering” (p. xiii).  Cunniff (2000) reports, "Speed acceleration is now a study in itself, involving the speedup of time to market, decision-making and innovation." and proposes several approaches to increasing speed include: (a) leveraging through out-sourcing, (b) exploring venture capital schemes to incubate new ideas, (c) perfecting a product by giving it away, (d) rebuilding the company around core competencies, and (e) cannibalizing a business before a competitor does (p. 4). 

Cunniff (2000) cites several examples where "speed champions" are appointed at the corporate level and chief executives are often directly involved: (a) Jack Welch, CEO of General Electric, encourages every business unit to appoint and e-commerce fanatic, who reports to the unit CEO, and is empowered to break every rule except the corporate values, (b) Carly Fioring, Hewlett-Packard's new CEO, appointed a new services solutions group and empowered it to be a "maverick and act like a dot-com" (p. 4).  However, Cunniff (2000) proposes that productivity is mainly responsible for the economic good times of the past decade, stating other explanations, such as the computer, Internet, and demographics, played supporting roles (p. 4); Gates (1999), attributes all to the flow of digital information (p. xiii).

Knowledge Management

It only took four years for the World Wide Web to be regularly used by more than a quarter of the U.S. population - a feat that took electricity 46 years, the television 26 years, and the personal computer 16 years to achieve.  Further, the capacity of the Internet backbone to carry information is doubling every 100 days and that data traffic is surpassing voice which is growing at 10% per year while data traffic is estimated conservatively to be growing at 125% per year suggesting voice will be less than 1% of the total traffic by 2007.  The average consumer would receive 1600 commercial e-mail messages in 2005, up from 40 in 1999, while non-marketing and personal correspondence would more than double from approximately 1750 e-mails per year in 1999 to almost 4000 in 2005 (Milliron, 1999, p. 26; Quick, 2000; Internet Council, 1999; Jupiter Communications, May 2000; Silver Creek Communications, LLC, 2000; Technology Futures, Inc., March 2000).

Currently there were 12,844,877 unique domain names registered worldwide, with 428,023 new domain names registered each week; in July 1999 there were 56.2 million “host” computers supporting web pages.  In July 1997 there were 19.5 million host computers with 3.2 million hosts in July 1994, and a mere 80,000 in July 1989.  Additionally, in just the last 24 hours, the web has added 3,180,000 new pages, 59,700,000,000 new bytes of text, 716,000 new images and 11,900,000,000 new bytes of image data.  Accordingly, the Web now contains over one billion unique, indexable documents and spending on Internet infrastructure is expected to quadruple to $1.5 trillion by 2003, surpassing the 1.3 trillion that will be spent on e-commerce in that year.  In 1999,  69% of all adults use a computer at home, work, or some other location which is up 19% from 1995; 81% of computer users go online, a 54% increase over 3 years ago; the number of electronic mail boxes worldwide jumped 84% to almost 570 million in 1999, and should reach 1 billion by the end of 2001; and in conclusion relate, analysts forecast that netizens will spend 5.3% of their lives on the Internet (NetNames Statistics 12/28/1999; The Censorware Project, Jan. 26, 1999; Internet Software Consortium-Internet Domain Survey, p. 1; Emarketeer/Inktomi Corp.,  Jan. 2000; eMarketeer/Harris Interactive, Feb. 2000; Messaging Online, Apr. 2000; IDC & Nortel, Feb. 2000; CyberDialogue, April 2000, p. 3).

Graduates require significantly different knowledge, skills, and abilities than the educational systems typically provide, to meet these new demands.  However,  we are in a Pre-Information Age, a time when we have more information than we need for our present careers and lives.  Davidson believes the Information Age will be defined by the fact that information will be useful and serve us and not just raw facts and data.  The object of knowledge management should be to build a learning organization; and this could improve the organization's ability to cope with the speed of change.  (Ellsworth, 2000, p. 2; Davidson, 1996; Wallace, 1999). 

Trends

On the Edge of the Digital Age 
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