Changes like that can vary between painful and disastrous for the man who is unprepared for them, while the man who is prepared welcomes them for the opportunities they provide. And the changes will be coming faster. According to figures from the Department of Labor, new types of jobs are being created at a rate of better than two percent a year. Project that progress report ahead of six years, and it means that one out of seven of us will be employed in a job category that doesn't exist at the present-Following that same "rate of change" projection, each year I advise my senior students at Fairleigh Dickinson
University that fully one-third of them has prepared themselves for careers that will be outmoded within a generation. Invariably this statement is greeted with groans accompanied by such bitter cracks as, "How can you study for a career if it's not going to be there?"
My answer to that is, "You aren't selling the label put on a chosen career, but the intelligence and talents of the man who chooses it. Your career label can change, but there will always be a demand for your abilities. The only real shortage in this world is in the number of people who know how to use their best abilities for the advancement of themselves and others."
Then I add, "When you prepare yourself for progress, you are preparing to double your earning power while doubling your hours of leisure. When you prepare yourself for a label, such as a title on the door, you are saying you want to leave things as they are. Now which do you really want-all the fantastic wonders of the future, or the world pretty much in the condition your fathers have it now?"
To that question they can return only one answer. Let's go! And since that can be the only answer, let's see what that means to you and your success. During the next ten years there will continue to be a serious shortage of men of management caliber. This is due to the relatively low birthrate during the depression years of the Thirties plus the frightful loss of our choicest young men during the war years. This means there will be a continued demand for older men of executive ability, and increasing pressure on the younger men and women to develop their executive abilities and earn their promotions as soon as possible.
Under these circumstances the opportunities have never been greater for men retiring at relatively young ages from military, government, and municipal positions. As of now, to the great loss of industry, most of these highly qualified persons have failed to take advantage of these opportunities because they have failed to relate a lifetime of military or civil service experience with similar backgrounds in industry. From the thousands of case histories in my files, let me mention just briefly two examples. The first concerns a naval architect who had spent 30 years at his profession in the Navy, rising to the rank of Captain. But as he told me, "I'm an expert on armor plating, and the need for that is about as obsolete as I am. The only offer I could get was five thousand a year in a small boat yard because they thought my rank would carry weight when I had to dish out orders."
He saw an entirely different picture by the time he had completed Functional Self-Analysis. Though he had enjoyed his work as a naval architect, specializing in armor-plating installations running into millions of dollars, ' the achievement in which he had found his greatest satisfaction had been in clearing a harbor of sunken ships, and installing new port facilities. Today, as the executive vice-president of a harbor-dredging and dock-building firm at $25,000 a year, he says, "I am a younger man today than when I was commissioned as an ensign in the Navy."
The second case history concerns a retired Colonel who found through Success Factor Analysis that he was a fully qualified city administrator. For 25 of his 30 years in the Army he had been either training or leading combat troops, but for what he called "five glorious years" he had been an occupation officer in charge of restoring one war-ravaged city after another. His greatest success had been achieved through working with local city officials, not all of whom had reason to love the Yanks whose shells had driven out the Germans to the great detriment of personal and public property.
Today he is the city manager of a town of 40,000, and though the town has switched its political allegiance from Democrat to Republican and back again, no one has ever suggested a switch in city managers. He is one happy man. And when you consider the hundreds of types of managerial jobs that are open and begging for occupants, and when you consider that you need but "functionalize" your past achievements in terms of these open opportunities to make them attainable, you may discover the full significance of the quotation from Lowell stated earlier: "No man is born into the world whose work is not born with him." The entire career to which you thought you had devoted your professional life may have been merely a preparation of your talents for this new job you were really born to do.
