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Posts Tagged ‘skills’

Future Work

May 11th, 2009
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Interdimensional Hopscotch 1 There are a lot of insightful people talking these days about the changes that are going on now. Of course the economy is challenging, as every mainstream media reports. However, the fundamental shifts that are undermining a speedy recovery to status quo are what I find more interesting. Lots of people are being laid off because some of our larger industries are facing hard times. For example, auto manufacturing workers and newspaper journalists spring to mind.

The Institute for the Future’s Tessa Finlev wrote an article called 10 Workplace Skills of the Future; the skills workers should strive to have and the skills workers should seek out and promote. The first three:

Ping Quotient
Excellent responsiveness to other people’s requests for engagement; strong propensity and ability to reach out to others in a network

Longbroading
Seeing a much bigger picture; thinking in terms of higher level systems, bigger networks, longer cycles

Open Authorship
Creating content for public modification; the ability to work with massively multiple contributors

Many people have one or more of these skills as native strengths. The question becomes how to make use of our strengths in a way that translates into a job. Human Resources (HR) departments don’t exactly know how to value or even recognize these as valuable capabilities yet. So how do we get to the future from here?

Coaching moment: Take a look at the list of skills  at Tessa’s post. Think about your past jobs, and write a job description that highlighted those strengths. Rewrite your résumé with a focus toward those skill sets. How might you quantify how well you did in any one area? Talk with your friends, see if they know of any jobs that sound like a fit for your new résumé. Note that they don’t have to think of job openings, just jobs that sound like good fits. It might give you a new direction for research and thought.

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Change is Coming

January 5th, 2009
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A couple of years ago, the original “Did You Know” video (this is the updated version) got me thinking about some of the changes that are coming to my world.

The magnitude of change that we’re likely to see in the next decade is enormous.

Coaching moment: Most of us have a hard time seeing the future. For all the changes in technology, nobody has invented a magic crystal ball yet. Our public media looks backward at what happened in the world. History has taught many of us, and we are rightly skeptical, about pundits that claim to know and see the future (and will share it with you–for a price.) What facts back their claims? Do you believe those facts? Are there any contradicting facts?

Despite the lack of a crystal ball, we will be affected by things happening in the future.

In times of change and uncertainty, I believe that it’s wise to do some planning. On the minimal side, sit down for a few minutes and think about your priorities. What is the most important thing in your life? Second most? Third? Talk with your family about their priorities. (You might be surprised to discover they don’t match your list exactly.) Next: what plans can you make to ensure the safety and security of your top priorities? What threats should you watch for?

Want to know more about possible changes on the horizon? Here’s a link to one man’s perspective: Chris Martenson’s Crash Course. He illustrates how changes may be pretty radical!

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