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Prepare for Change: Present and Future Need

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The typical 18 year old in America today will go on to change careers (not just jobs) an average of six or seven times in his or her lifetime. A growing number of sources is making that prediction. I believe it may even be a conservative estimate.

We are in the midst of change. It is accelerating at a dizzying pace. And while change is a constant in life, few of us handle it with comfort. To handle what is coming, we need to regain a vitality which we have lost: The ability to cope with change.

It is easy to forget that major change is a fact of life.



My father and mother were born in 1886, into the horse and carriage era. The telephone and radio were in their infancy. During their lives, my parents saw the automobile come into existence. They read news stories about the first powered airplane flight. They saw the development of the jet plane, then space flight. They watched the first moon-walk on television.

They lived through the First World War and the boom and bust of the '20s and '30s. They suffered the anguish of some of their children enlisting in the Second World War. They saw the wars in Korea and Vietnam.

The computer age began in the last years of their lives, but they had no idea what changes it would bring to society.

Their lives more or less paralleled the Industrial Revolution. They not only survived, but flourished in the midst of major change in society. They simply looked to the future with hope, secure in their faith in themselves. They knew they could and would adjust.

Oddly enough, the changes wrought by the Industrial Revolution make it difficult for us today to cope with change. We became the workforce in large corporations, the bureaucrats in government, and the products of the educational system that pre pared us for both. In that process, we became dependent on these institutions. Have we become a co-dependent nation? Sadly, I think we have.

Current events are forcing that dependency to end, like it or not. Companies across the country are down-sizing. Some of the giants are under great strain. New industries are coming into being, while old ones are disappearing. Our society is restructuring itself on a global basis.

Eventually, this will benefit us as individuals and as a nation. The crescendo of layoffs and announcements of layoffs is issuing a wake-up call that none of us dares to ignore. The trend is toward creating smaller companies, and employing fewer people at all levels of business.

The new era - variously called the Information Explosion, the Knowledge Revolution, etc. - is causing an upheaval in the tectonic plates of society. The Industrial Revolution in retrospect looks like a minor rumble.

As these changes occur, we as individuals must learn to compete in the marketplace. To do so requires us to broaden our horizons, and search out a greater span of alternatives.

It was a mistake ever to relinquish responsibility for our own security to an organization, no matter how large its size. This shirking of our responsibility makes poor human (and business) sense. It cripples us mentally and emotionally. It also prevents us from moving into that maturity that comes only with taking full control of our own destinies.

Years of social programming have created in us attitudes and methods which result in the standard job search. It is an antiquated approach. Our parents implanted it in most of us. The education system reinforced it.

It's business as usual in the halls of education. Teach students in the usual way, knowing that 18 months after graduation, their knowledge will be outdated. Train them in the outdated methods of searching for jobs. Prepare them simply to use the outdated standard job-hunt methods. Instruct them in the use of educational credentials and resumes, which are tools of the past. Equip them to be employees. Prepare them to be subservient to the system.

A growing number of hardy souls is surfacing. There are those who take matters into their own hands. We see the occasional person who takes control, who makes plans for a career beyond Boeing (or Sears, or IBM, Frederick & Nelson, the auto companies... and many others).

This is the person who develops his or her own goals. It is the one who learns how to search out and create a professional relationship with an employer, or the one who knows how to found and develop a business.

If courageous people like these can have the attention they deserve, it will inspire others to follow their example.

The wave of the future will be individuals who know professionally how to move in the market. It will be those who develop their ability to find or create their own means of income.

The indomitable spirit which carried my parents and their generation through the changes of the Industrial Revolution is nearly dormant in the American people. It must rise again, and I believe it will rise again.

There are signs now of a grass-roots movement, a groundswell of adjustment to the changes. Like teenagers who feel too restricted by our parents, we are realizing that our dependency on job, company, government, and education is restricting us. We are flexing our muscles, but we don't quite know how to use them yet.

We must revert to the indomitable self-sufficiency which developed this country. It is the same spirit which brought the pioneers from East to West. We need once again to realize that we will find our security simply in ourselves.

We must regain our ability to control our own destinies, our lives and our careers. It is essential that we develop our personal professionalism. This means that we be able to act with personal initiative; that we accurately project our true strengths and abilities without offending; that we regain our individual self-sufficiency and independence.

We must recover our capacity to make changes when change is upon us.
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