A brand for a company is like a reputation for a person. You earn reputation by trying to do hard things well.
Jeff Bezos – Amazon Founder
Work metaphors offer visuals, beacons, insights, scripts, and Work Lessons Earned. Metaphors help us design a vision of what to expect from work. The career ladder is a great visual metaphor. A VUCAN started at the bottom and with the right effort climbed each rung.
BTW: VUCAN(R) is an VUCA iNhabitant.
A year ago when I talked to truck drivers they said ‘there’s no way a robot could do my job.’ This year they say, ‘We need to make robot trucks illegal’.
Andrew Yang – U.S. Presidential Candidate
The fear of massive job losses started about six years ago when University of Oxford released a report of job losses due to automation. The University reported 47% of current U.S. jobs are at risk of being impacted by or totally displaced by automation and artificial intelligence in 20 years or less.(1)
In the latest Oxford report, the numbers got worse – 80% of jobs in retail, transportation warehousing, and logistics are at risk and 63% of sales jobs were at risk pre-COVID. And by the way, the job losses and changes now will happen in 5 to 10 years or even less time because of COVID. But there’s a positive side, Tech Futures will also create work and jobs:
Work Lesson Earned: The automation of work is a global challenge. Millennial and Gen Z generations believed their economic and work futures were guaranteed with any college education. The global challenge is there are not enough high paying jobs for people and specifically recent college graduates.
(1) ‘New Report Warns 80% of Retail Jobs At Risk From Automation’, Oxford Martin School September 1, 2017.
(2) ‘Jobs of Tomorrow’, International Monetary Fund, Winter 2020.
Your mind is working its best when you’re being paranoid. You explore every avenue and possibility of your situation at high speed with total clarity.
Banksy – Street Artist
Healthy paranoia is a necessary condition during these disruptive times. Paranoia is not a medicated condition. Paranoia is not a psychiatric condition. Paranoia is awareness of life disruptions that provide direction in how you work, respond, sustain, improve, and even excel. Continue reading
When you make the decision to start something new, first figure out the jobs you want to do. Then position yourself to play where no one else is playing.
Whitney Johnson – Writer
When should you self-disrupt? There’s no easy answer. However, it’s about your personal risk appetite. Do you think you need to change or self-disrupt? Is the pain of self-disrupting less than the pain of staying the way or where you are? Self-disruption is difficult. Most of us want to take the path of least resistance (risk averse) and not change. Continue reading
Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.
Søren Kierkegaard – Philosopher
Several years ago, there was an ad for Putnam Investments:
“You think you understand the situation, but what you don’t understand is the situation just changed.”
Amen! This seems to be a fundamental Disruption Rule: When I think I’ve just got it, ‘got’ and ‘it’ both seem to have changed. This could be on a global, business, and personal level. Continue reading