The New Work Force
What is the new work force, it’s technology, it’s automation. There is a major shift in how work is and will be done in the next 5 – 10 years, and it will be done by machines. This releases people from jobs, tasks that a machine can do. Once people are free, they will have another problem, multiple problems actually. What to do with this new-found free time, and what to do to generate income to live on.
Before the Industrial Age, people help one another, before there was regular pay cheque we traded food, furs, we gave each other food, all kinds of things, we exchanged services between neighboring communities, helped build homes for families new to the area. It was a harder life than we know, but it was also a simpler time.
This freedom will create a nervous breakdown for many, the Industrial Age, the factory work, manual labour, gave us structure, we had a set of rules and duties that had to be completed, we were told what to do, and we did it well. In the near future, this structure will now tell technology what and how to do the tasks of the day.
There are many reasons for this automation to take over, the big one, profit, and there is this thinking that people are like software, and are a problem that needs to be improved upon, upgraded if you will. There are some Futurists, Jeremy Rifkin & Andrew McAfee, who believe we are heading towards a world where people no longer need to work. Which begs the question, what replaces work? How do people make a living? Personally, work may not set us free, but it brings meaning to our days, and without it we’d be lost.
Should this come to pass, there’s good news…60% of the best jobs in the next 20 years haven’t even been invented yet, that brings great opportunity and innovation to all. I’m already thinking about what some of these new jobs might be or look like, I’ll write about it of course : )
The new work force, coming sooner than you think.
What Do You Want To Optimize?
What do you want to optimize, new ways to succeed, new ways to learn, you have to own this, it’s in your hands.
Every time we make a new technology, a new tool, we make a new way of seeing. Learning to see is paramount, foresight is your friend, it can scare you, it can lead you, but it rarely shows you all the steps, and it never reveals the vision.
There are so many things to optimize, we’re distracted, busy schedules, work, family, technology, we believe collecting Likes & Followers is optimizing, it’s not, it’s another distraction from doing real work. The beautiful thing about technology, it allows us to do so much, more importantly, it allows you to define your own success.
Learning what to optimize requires balance, in work and in your personal life. Optimizing also needs clarity, understanding the why and learning to see make optimizing easier. Some learn quickly, while other’s take more time to find the balance, and how to see. The greatest commodity is time, we fight to use our time wisely; we have yet to master the problem of time, we’re all running out of it.
Most of us just want to live a healthy life, we think happiness can be bought, but it’s merely a decision you make, circumstances are the results of our thoughts and actions. If they are good, we did a better job of optimizing, if they’re not what we would prefer, we tend to deflect and blame it on others or something else. The answer is in it’s simplicity, stop, look, and listen comes to mind….our Mother’s taught us that age old lesson. If we could exercise that lesson more often, we would most likely be in a better place.
So take a different view of your business, maybe your personal life, from 50,000ft, what do you see, then make a list, what do you want to optimize?
What Happened To Target’s Canadian Brand?
Let’s first ask the question, ” What Is A Brand?”.
It’s not a Logo , it’s not a Name….a brand is a series of expectations that people have of your product or service, based on the promises you’ve made.
Using that as the definition of a brand, answering the question of what happened to Target’s Brand in Canada, it was broken from the moment they opened their doors. They didn’t keep their promises, lower prices, more selection, and so on.
They broke their promises, and now they are closing 133 stores in Canada….why? Because you didn’t trust them when they said they would make good on their promises. You had a bad experience with Target Canada.
So what’s your businesses Brand? Have you gone the traditional Industrial Age way of thinking, where your brand is a logo or a name, and don’t really care, or have you decided to give your market positive experiences, based on the promises you kept, reflecting how much you do care. The later is the new connected business model, it’s open & it’s free….The Open & Free Business Model.
Social Media Is Not A Business Model!
Dare I be so bold to say it, Social Media is not a business model.
I struggle with the resistance of business owners still today, hanging onto old ways of doing things, trying be in control, running around in circles trying to keep up, business has changed / is changing to where you must deliver your product or service to your customers, if you don’t, they’ll click and be gone. It wasn’t long ago when you had to go to the store, we used film for pictures, we no longer need a land-line, and kept current reading newspapers, now we just have to make a few clicks on a mobile device!
Customers are taking away the business owners power, they are choosing how and when, and how much they’ll pay. This has very little to do with Social Media, it does have everything to do with how business really is, and eventually you will either embrace it, or continue to resist it…either way, you’ll have to change how think about your customers, and how you run your business. Sure there will always be certain types of business that need manual labour, but many of those jobs, as much as you don’t want to believe it, will be lost to automation, this technological change will be devastating to the families relying on those jobs.
This has very little to do with Social Media, it does however, have everything to do with The Open & Free Business Model!
Social Media is NOT a business model, you don’t plug your business into Social Media, you plug Social Media INTO your business.
Do you prefer Blogs Or Social Networks?
Today I ask the question:
“Do you prefer comments on a Blog, or conversations on FaceBook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other Social Networks?”
I prefer Blogs, I like to keep the conversations here, not spread over multiple Social networks, at least here everything is self-contained. It’s easier to pull together smart thinking when all the comments and thinking are in one site when a question is posed. Now, having said that, you’ll notice this Blog doesn’t get many comments, maybe my content just isn’t interesting, or people just don’t agree and don’t take the time to let me know. It matters not, this is my space, it’s also a space for people who are interested, like-minded if you will, in my research, my point of view, my perspective, my foresight…it gets cataloged here on this Blog.
Now, I can’t control where you want to talk about my ideas, my blog posts, I just go where you are….when I have the time. The easiest way to get my writing…sign-up for my updates, then it hits the Inbox, that’s where we can have real in-depth conversations.
I understand it’s easier to comment on a Social Network, I publish to Social Networks with the hopes you will come here, at least then you might look around, read more and get exposed to more of my ideas and thoughts.
So if you aren’t commenting here, you may have already answered my question, or maybe…you never thought about it before. Never the less, feel free to comment here, I would love to get your view on the topic.
Do you prefer Blogs Or Social Networks?