Is your job about to be extinct, or does it even exist – yet.

When I was at college I had little idea what my career path would look like. My mother, being of solid English stock had it all worked out for me. “Get a trade son; you’ll have a job for life” she insisted. While there was a sound basis for her reasoning, the reality was the world was changing at a pace we could not comprehend back then in the heady days of the 70’s. Just look at Moore’s Law as a point of reference.

As it turned out I did get a trade, I don’t regret the practicality engineering taught me, and little would get done if we all abandoned the construction and manufacturing sectors, but it was the internet that caught my attention and became my passion. No one predicted I could make a living from it during my college years, it didn’t exist. Thank goodness I didn’t set my heart to being a door to door encyclopaedia salesman. 

We need to be training now for jobs that don’t exist, the same reason we need to be constantly modifying and improving the way be do business or we risk our existing positions becoming extinct. Our traditional ways of learning and teaching have to keep pace or they are going to fail our children’s information hungry minds. Only by teaching the entrepreneurial and value creating skills and mindset to all young people will we cope. The daunting thing for those of us not brought up with cyberspace and computer technology as a given, is we have to find a way of keeping pace ourselves. If not, we will be left in the proverbial silicon dust as newer generations pass us by.

From a business perspective it concerns me that a large majority of New Zealand businesses do not even have a website, let alone considering embracing the potential power of the social networking environments that are emerging from every electronic orifice. 

The reality is, when asked, they just don’t know where to start - it comes down to lack of understanding. It’s never too late to set aside our fears and excuses of “it’s just not for me”. Learn from others and avoid making the same mistakes they did and we will be just fine. That’s what the Monday Morning business development concepts are all about; we are here to learn together, to share our collective knowledge and to grow for the good of you as an individual and us all as a community.