Four ways to ensure your future
How can I provide for the long-term future of my family? Are you asking the same question?
The fact is that you can’t trust that the company you work for will provide a career progression for you or even provide for you financially in the long term. The Business Insider wrote an article about the delusional belief of careers. “… people today can no longer rely on an outdated system of career advancement — one that presumes employees will be given incremental chances for career advancement along with raises and title changes.”. I have certainly found this true in my life.
It is the same with running a business where you have to be continually innovative to make it relevant for the customers you are serving.
One things for sure that you and I can’t ignore reality and hope that things magically change. We have to have faith that life rewards action and that if we prepare as best we can, and do the necessary work, that we will be rewarded.
Here are four things that I am trying to work through and I hope will help you as well.
1. Predicting the future
Life is incredibly uncertain and change is taking place as an ever increasing pace. There is a good chance that the company you are working for, or have, will not be around in 2023. That is just five years’ time!
So is there a way that you can predict what the world will look like in 2023? No – but we can use all the resources we have to make an educated guess and then work towards this imagined world.
The future of jobs report 2018
An important resource is a report produced by the World Economic Forum (WEF) titled “The future of jobs Report 2018”. I encourage you to download and read it.
Here are some excerpts from the report:
Skills demand in 2023 top ten:
Analytical thinking and innovation
Active learning and learning strategies
Creativity, originality and initiative
Technology design and programming
Critical thinking and analysis
Complex problem-solving
Leadership and social influence
Emotional intelligence
Reasoning, problem-solving and ideation
Systems analysis and evaluation
New roles:
Data Analysts and Scientists
AI and Machine Learning Specialists
General and Operations Managers
Big Data Specialists
Digital Transformation Specialists
Sales and Marketing Professionals
New Technology Specialists
Organizational Development Specialists
Software and Applications Developers and Analysts
Information Technology Services
Process Automation Specialists
Innovation Professionals
Information Security Analysts
Ecommerce and Social Media Specialists
User Experience and Human-Machine
Interaction Designers
Training and Development Specialists
Robotics Specialists and Engineers
People and Culture Specialists
Client Information and Customer Service Workers
Service and Solutions Designers
Digital Marketing and Strategy Specialists
For South Africa:
Top five technology adoption:
User and entity big data analytics
Machine learning
App- and web-enabled markets
Cloud computing
Internet of things
Emerging skills:
Analytical thinking and innovation
Creativity, originality and initiative
Active learning and learning strategies
Technology design and programming
Complex problem-solving
Leadership and social influence
Reasoning, problem-solving and ideation
Critical thinking and analysis
Resilience, stress tolerance and flexibility
Emotional intelligence
Thinking skills and technology
Based on this report it seems that the ideal skills to have for the future is the ability to think analytically, creatively but also have relevant technology knowledge and skills.
What are you doing to prepare yourself for 2023 and beyond? How do you see yourself changing to be successful?
2. Continuous education
Do you feel overwhelmed by the list of skills and new roles discussed in the WEF “The future of jobs Report 2018”? I must say I do.
Today we have to be continually learning and fortunately there are a lot of excellent cost-effective resources at our disposal.
Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs):
My favourite MOOC at the moment is EDX (www.edx.org) where there are thousands of excellent courses to study.A course that I have been doing, and really enjoying is “Idea Development: Create and Implement Innovative Ideas". Of course it often gets quite difficult to find the time to do the courses you have selected but I believe it is worth it.
Podcasts:
Podcasts are another fantastic way to get valuable content and almost all free.My current favourite podcasts are:
The Ziglar Show – Inspiring Your True Performance
Best Practice
HBR IdeaCast
The Tim Ferriss Show
The Tony Robbins Podcast
The great thing about podcasts is that you can listen to them on the way to work or while exercising.
I think it is also important to do courses at the leading South African providers, and online internationally, but I find that they are often quite expensive (for me at least).
What are you doing to increase your knowledge and skills?
3. Own your industry
I have recently “discovered” Douglas Kruger and have been reading his material and watching his videos of Youtube. I might actually buy one of his books one day 😊.
One of the books he has written is titled “Own your industry – how to position yourself as an expert”.
I don’t know if you have noticed but the recognised, and extremely wealthy, people all own their industry. It has long been that in sport only a small percentage of professionals make significant money while most battle to make ends meet. The top footballers, tennis players, rugby players, cricket players (and all other sports) own their industries and so reap the rewards.
It might be that in future you will have to own your industry just to make a good living – or am I being a bit overly dramatic.
Douglas Kruger says that to own an industry you have to have three things:
Knowledge: You need to know what you are doing.
Personality: You need to be someone who is different and larger than life. There are so many examples of this from Richard Branson through to Elon Musk.
Promotion: Get out and introduce yourself to the world.
Douglas also says that if you are known as an expert then they will come to you.
Of course to do this you have to have a niche that provides value for people and companies so that when you do become a leader in your niche that it provides financial reward. To do this we have to go back to our predictions of the future and fill a niche that we predict will be needed.
As a shy introvert I have to work on the personality and particularly the promotion aspects of owning my industry. It doesn’t come easy to me and I have to actively force myself to this. Do you find this easy?
Are you making plans to own your industry? Let’s do it together…
4. Having a Side hustle
I used to think of a side hustle as something that shouldn’t be done but the truth is that companies do this all the time. Companies often form divisions, or separate companies, that focus on new products, services and business models. This is a basic innovation process and, if it fails then it is done fast and cheap, but if successful can become the main focus of the company.
We have recently seen this with Naspers where they started with Multichoice but have now become a global internet group.
Idea Storm is essentially my side hustle where I can play with things until I hopefully find something that works and perhaps it can grow into a fully-fledged business.
What is your side hustle?
In summary
I find that in order to provide for the future I am thinking of at least these four things:
Predicting the future
Continuous education
Owning my industry
Having a side hustle
Are you thinking about the future? How do you continuously re-invent yourself?
Don’t be discouraged! The world has never had more opportunities for you and me. We need to work and position ourselves so that the world needs our skills both now and the future – and pay us generously for them.
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