Which path are you taking? Five ways to engage with disruption is the title of my recent LinkedIn newsletter. The newsletter has a leadership following, so I covered the topic from an organisational perspective. It occurred to me that this applies to any of us who trade our time for money.
The conveyor belt
Previous generations typically picked a career. Those who did well at school found they had more career options. They could choose, for example, professions in law, medicine accountancy and architecture. Once they finished the profession-specific educational top up, they were all set to jump on a conveyor belt that ascended both from a remuneration and social status perspective.
However, those conveyor belts are breaking down and so previously revered professional paths are going the way of typing pool clerks and lamplighters. Today, mapped out career paths are giving way to a random collection of professional chapters. A career for life is now increasingly a series of gigs, sometimes played out in parallel, ranging from years to hours.
My own career via astrophysics, software engineering and advisory resembles the metal ball in a pinball machine. The goal is to stay in play and avoid bypassing the flickers and ending up in the pinball ‘drain’.
The flickers exist to keep the pinball in play. Time it correctly and they can fire you back into the heart of the game. Your capability, and to a large extent your reserves, are what keep you in the economic game. Reserves, ie cash, act as a buffer if you have a fallow period between gigs. Your capability makes you economically interesting to the market.
So let’s look at our options for navigating an increasingly disrupted marketplace:
Ignore it
Your current employer may be a blue chip with a paternalistic leaning. So it might be stormy outside, but you need not worry. Keep in mind that roughly fifty percent of the Fortune 500 companies are replaced every few decades. And even if your employer is smart enough to stay in play, they may well achieve that with more tech and less people.
Hibernate
You may have the reserves to travel the world for a few years with a view to jumping back into the game when some form of new normal is established. Something radical would need to happen to decelerate increasing disruption, think large asteroid fragment. So hibernation isn’t the solution.
Devolve
Rather than be a pretty good generalist regulatory lawyer, become the world authority on just one regulation. This could work until the regulation is dropped or a piece of software turns your capability into an office software plug-in.
Innovate
You could find innovative ways to enhance your capabilities – such as using ChatGPT to boost your productivity as a journalist or outsourcing lower-value tasks to skilled professionals in countries like the Philippines or Vietnam, allowing you to focus on higher-value work. However, if the market no longer requires your capability, no matter how innovatively delivered, it’s simply ‘game over.’
Adapt
Adaptiveness is an approach that has served both mankind and all existing living systems for billions of years. There is no point staring at the bush when all the berries have gone. It’s time to find another source of food.
Adaptiveness requires a real-time understanding of what the market values. Those that can pick up on weak signals and professionally reposition themselves accordingly are more likely to stay in play.
Lifelong learning is no longer an option. As Cal Newport, author of So Good They Can’t Ignore You, pointed out, following your passion is unlikely to end well. Your ability to understand what the market values and align yourself accordingly is the key to professional success.
This is partially a matter of capability, but it is also a matter of positioning. Whether we like it or not, we are all in marketing.
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