Being adaptable is the new normal
Career development is no longer about trying to guess what your ideal job is, writes Jim Bright.
OPINION: Perhaps the only comment one can make about work that is unchanging, is that work is changing.
It always has of course, but there is a big difference between continuous change and discontinuous change.
As many of us start the new year determined to place less of a burden on our scales, we know that healthy weight loss is a slow continuous process.
Discontinuous change would be to wake up after a night on the donuts to find you’ve doubled your weight and then it promptly doubles again during the following day.
Discontinuous change is scary. We may be experiencing a period of discontinuous change in how we work right now.
First there was ability. If you were strong you did manual or military work. If you were intelligent you did clerical or leadership work.
Then there was flexibility. After the industrial revolution, workers who were flexible enough to head for the cities found work in the newly established factories and offices.
Next there was sociability. As work changed from production lines to production teams and the communications revolution provided for instant connection with colleagues far and wide, working in teams became, perhaps, the norm.
Inevitably there was a demand from employers to select those with the very best work attributes and a desire to monitor and improve their performance.
This led to the development of measures of skill, intelligence (or IQ) and, latterly, social skills and then emotional intelligence (EQ).
Now there is adaptability. Whereas being flexible implies a willingness to stretch or bend, being adaptable means capable of becoming transformed.
Water at 10 degrees behaves in a broadly similar fashion to water heated to 25 degrees – you can swim in both.
However, go 15 degrees the other way and the only thing to swim in the resultant ice should be a decent gin.
Across many industries and occupations we are at a time when we cannot see that far down the road ahead. Disruptive technologies may (or may not) have a profound impact on how, where and who does the work we do today.
Trying to place bets on what is going to change is hazardous. You can book a non-stop flight this year from London to Perth, but, after as many years of talk, you still can’t commute from Gosford to Sydney by ferry.
The smartcard public transport ticketing system in Sydney was completed only 15 years after its promised implementation for the Olympic Games, yet surely the cards will be supplanted by smartphones and watches in the very near future.
There is a consensus forming that adaptability and measures of it (so-called AQ or adaptability quotient) are going to be critical for future success. This has major implications for education and career development.
We will always need specialists, but increasingly everyone, including specialists, educators and service providers will need adaptability.
Some of us have been arguing for the past 20 years that the aim of career development is no longer trying to guess what the ideal job for any individual will be, and instead it is and will increasingly be about helping people develop the skills of adaptability, and thus boosting their adaptability. –Sydney Morning Herald
❚ Jim Bright is a professor of career education and development at Australian Catholic University and owns Bright and Associates, a career consultancy.