Future Proofing Careers.

The Future Does Not Fit in the Containers of the Past. Edition 205.

This is the third in a series of why adopting “A Company of One Mindset” can help every individual thrive irrespective of the size of company, location or type of industry one works in. 

When one adopts “ A Company of One Mindset” it means incorporating three behaviors which include:

a) Being in charge of your own career by being your own Human Resources and Learning and Development Manager ( in addition to any your company provides.)

b) Building a reputation for GENEROSITY internally and externally that signals expertise, depth of relevant skills and ability to work well with others and most importantly as someone who helps others get ahead versus just being focussed on oneself. 

c) Investing in 3 key skills that will continue to matter regardless and in spite of what the next generation of technologies or global shocks might bring.

By being a company of one and focussing on controlling your own career, building a world class reputation buttressed by generosity and honing the skills that will endure regardless of technological upheaval ensures that you will future proof your career. 

Being in Charge of Our Own Career.

Today most people will work for 50 years while most companies last fewer than fifteen.

Even if your company has been around for a hundred years the talent team in any company is focussed on serving the company you work for first versus you. They need to hire to their strategy, retain talent in some areas and exit talent in others, invest in skills the company needs now and for the future which might not be consistent with your career strategy, your continued need for income and different than the skills you need for now and the future.

Human Resource and Learning and Development teams are critical and important and can be a huge benefit to everyone but the individual must decide how to utilize, leverage and strategically incorporate the resources of these teams. 

Too many people end up not being prepared when their company downsizes or their career stalls. They find that they do not have the skills that make them marketable and their reputation and networks are deeply limited and often over indexing in their own industry which might be in secular decline.

Do not out source your future to your company.

To be in charge of your own career is to have the optionality of leaving your existing company at any time with a high likelihood of improving your position and income.

Paradoxically when you do this you can focus on your job, stay long in your company and even adapt to soap opera drama at work because you know you have options. 

And your company by knowing that will also treat you well.

Build a Personal Reputation while helping others generously .

a) Every individual should Google or ChatGPT themselves and work to improve the results by developing their own web presence, by being active on social channels, and participating in industry activities ( Many industry events from Cannes to CES to Davos double as networking and personal brand positioning events as much as generating leads and connecting with Clients.)

b) Ask people who lost jobs what they learned and did to get their new job. You are likely to learn that :

1) being good to people who need help when we had a job will help us when we are in need 

2) we should not make the mistake of conflating our company and position with our own reputation. People are genuflecting to our role not us , so we need to build our own expertise and brand in addition to the halo of our company.

3) If one focuses only on oneself without building one’s company’s brand or helping others build theirs it will backfire. We work for companies and if we do not keep them in focus they will note it. And our reputation is built on the quality of our work and relationships not just our postings. 

c) Begin another career while you are working on an existing career: There are many parallel careers one can run which are not in anyway conflicted with or need to be hidden from your management.

These include writing, teaching, public speaking, advising non-profits or being active in industry or personal passions such as art, music and other civil or charitable events.

These help one build skills, create goodwill by helping others and giving back, expose oneself to new people and thinking which can help one’s current job and much more.

Do the things you would do if you lost a job and had to find one.

Don’t wait.

Till it is too late.

Investing in three key skills.

Five major forces from technology, to demographic change, to the launch of marketplaces, to the rewiring of work due to Covid and the rise of an economy of gig work will impact every job. Just one component of one of these areas, technology, which is AI is likely to impact all our jobs significantly in less than three years.

Regardless of what the future will bring including amazing AI here are key skills to future proof ourselves

a) Communication Skills: Get our company to or invest ourselves in building our writing and speaking skills. We will need to be great writers to differentiate from the adequate writing of AI and when everybody has the same knowledge due to AI our ability to take this knowledge and data and add something more to what the machine emits will be key. Forget learning Mandarin or Coding learn how to hone writing skills and become a great presenter in one’s native language. If the future is AI +HI a big part of HI will be world class communication skills. It can be learned and it will make a difference.

b) Making/Creating/Imagining/Building: Sooner rather than later all knowledge will be free so much of our existing expertise will matter less. Also anything that has to do with allocating, compiling, researching , measuring and computing will be be done 100 X faster and 10X cheaper by technology.

So we should ask how much of our time are we spending making and creating things or asking questions to re-imagine our business and ourselves or building other people or our Clients business versus processing stuff and sitting in meetings watching the same powerpoint updated with new numbers every month!

c) Continuous Re-Invention: The day one believes one is a Master is the day one begins the road to disaster.

A key skill will not just be learning constantly but also unlearning and detaching from some past ways or beliefs. There is no going back but only moving ahead. Imagine if we came out of school today, would we act and behave the way we do or are we doing what we do because we believe 1) we will retire before change hits us, 2)we cannot learn new things because they are complicated or 3) because we do not have time.

We should not sell ourselves short.

Everybody regardless of age can re-invent. The ability to learn is cheap and there are many real world and online resources to tap.

Finally growth and learning is key to life since the day we stop learning is the day we start dying.

Unless we plan to end our career in a year or less we will have to begin future proofing right away whether we like it or not.

Photography by Michael Clark

Rishad Tobaccowala leverages forty years of global experience across dozens of industries to help leaders and companies thrive in transformative times.