A look back at two decades of world-shaking change
What if I had told you – 20 years ago – that we’d now be entwined and immersed in a world where:
Social media has gotten so out of control that users are now shedding it.
We’d be driving cars that get charged up, not filled up.
mRNA vaccines would teach your body how to fight viruses, rather than fighting the viruses themselves.
We could be witnessing and recognizing the onset of the age of anthropogenic destruction of Planet Earth.
Farming would become an urban occupation (vertical) and we’d be bringing produce fresh to inner-city tables in hours, not days.
Quantum computing will make algorithm development a more popular profession for math majors than teaching math.
Fusion energy would have its breakthrough to supersede all other renewable energy forms.
Life on other planets (past or present) is less of a fantasy than you might be comfortable with.
Artificial intelligence and robots will change everything.
What would you have done? Let me guess. You might not have settled in to read this column for the last 20 years, weekly for 19 years as “Career Coach” in the Jobs section and now biweekly as “Vantage Point” in the Business section. But here we are. It was June 29, 2003, when my first column appeared – and
I’m still writing and you’re still reading. I know we’ve all gotten older; I just hope we’ve gotten wiser in the process.
That first column, although good (if I may), was mundane: résumés, interviewing, networking – nowhere near the mind-stretching stuff we deal with today. And the fact that at any given moment things happen, but over time things change, is the backdrop to the message I carry today. So if we look back on the job market and on careers over the last 20 years, and providing we’ve been paying attention, questioning things, and engaging in the ever-powerful “What if?” exercise, we’ll not only notice the momentary occurrences, we’ll recognize big trends. We’ll ask, as Albert Einstein always did, “What’s going on here? What is this a part of ?” And we won’t be afraid of the answer.
That said, and looking back over these 20 years of writing combined with 26 years of independent career coaching, I’ve seen the comings and goings of major companies – entire industries, actually – three recessions and two spectacular bounce-backs, the building of the strongest job market in history (the current one, if you need to be told), global crises aplenty, and – in essence – a change in the most fundamental element of life: change itself.
Whereas we have traditionally measured things by height, width, depth, weight, cost or time, we must let go of the old rules and assess change in terms of nature, pace and scope. The nature of change is that it has migrated from the hands of the powerful to the hands of “two guys in a garage.” The pace is no longer constant; we are in a state of per
petual acceleration. And as for the scope, change that used to take decades or more to reach across short distances now encircles the globe like a big bang.
As a result of all this, and with all due respect to the lifetime of work we have each put into becoming really good at something (or, in many admirable cases, more than one thing), my message is that readiness is more important than expertise, even if you have — or think you have — only a few more years in your career. Curiosity is your greatest force, adaptability your greatest trait, and willingness to change your greatest assurance that you will. The desired result of your effort will be an ever-expanding sphere of awareness. It’s an absolutely uncompromising state and an inarguable concept.
And in line with my own advice, my career coaching practice has changed dramatically. I‘m not the cobbler without shoes, so when you call me, be prepared to talk about change, about innovation, about the future — which we’re actually already in — and how you’ll get from here to there. This is no longer about what your eye can see; it’s about what your mind can imagine.
Meanwhile, I’m grateful to you for reading this column for 20 years and ever so much to this newspaper for giving me the arena to fulfill my mission to serve and help as many people as I can reach. No one can change the whole world, but anyone can change whatever part of it they can touch.
Eli Amdur has been providing individualized career and executive coaching, as well as corporate leadership advice, since 1997. For 15 years he taught graduate leadership courses at FDU. He has been a regular writer for this and other publications since 2003. You can reach him at eli.amdur@amdurcoaching.com or 201-357-5844.