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GEAR YOUR LIFE TO THE CONCEPT OF CHANGE

Getting off the tiger of change is not feasible. Tiger-riding lessons are necessary.

—JOHN D. ADAMS, PH.D.

Abraham Lincoln once told of the eastern monarch who challenged his wise men to invent a sentence that would be true and appropriate in all times and situations. They presented him with the words: "And this, too, shall pass away." As the twentieth century gives way to the twenty-first, these words become ever more appropriate. It is now a cliché to say that rapid change has become the norm.

The changes reach into the social, moral, and spiritual dimensions of life, as Dr. Ernesto Michelucci, psychologist with the Rochester (New York) Mental Health Center, has pointed out. Michelucci has counseled many people who found themselves jobless after massive layoffs at Eastman Kodak, Xerox, and other large companies in the Rochester area. He observed:

As a society, we are moving away from the idea of one marriage, one family, one career—but so many people here still hold on to that world view. I try to get across to them that the zeitgeist¹ is completely different today²?

No one is immune from these changes, but when you focus your life on principles, you can negotiate the changes more surely. People can be unreliable and disloyal; possessions can lose their value; jobs that once stimulated you can become boring. But principles remain steady through it all. As a laid-off corporate director of marketing and public relations told Fortune, “I don’t think I will ever invest so much of myself in my job again. I defined myself by my job and the work relationships around me.”³

If you live by a set of principles that remain constant even through turbulent change, you will be able to deal more constructively with the change. You will maintain the power to choose the way you respond to situations. And you will be able to create new situations by committing to new visions when the time comes to do so.

PREPARE FOR NEW WORLDS

Even as you follow your current vision, you can prepare yourself for the day when the vision is fulfilled and you must look for other worlds to conquer. This is especially true when it comes to careers. It was once possible for young people to set their minds on a particular career with the confident expectation that they would be able to master it and grow prosperous in it by the time they reached middle age. They could expect to start work with a solid, substantial company, and work their way up through the hierarchy to secure, good-paying positions.

Today, notes Fortune, many people with excellent technical educations “have discovered that their skills have peaked five years after graduation and that they will be replaced by more recent graduates.”⁴

In such a fast-paced environment, success requires that you cultivate adaptability to change. So even as you pursue your present vision, acquire the qualities that will enable you to create and pursue new visions that will be equally exciting.

Aftereffects of Downsizing

The future holds much cause for optimism, but at the same time you must be prepared to deal with its changing circumstances. During the decade of the nineties, most large companies executed some form of downsizing, resulting in massive layoffs of both middle-management and production workers. The trend has been to target functions instead of people. But when new management or new technologies replace entire functions, the people who performed those functions are out of jobs, and their old skills are useless.

Old Skills Won’t Suffice

The new economy will create many good jobs. But to take advantage of them, you’ll have to acquire the education and the skills to perform them. The skills you used on the old job probably won’t be enough.

For instance, Pacific Telesis Group (PacBell) used to dispatch twenty thousand trucks a day to respond to calls from customers having problems with their lines. If the defect was inside the home or office, it was the customer’s problem, and customers would usually elect to do the repairs themselves. PacBell developed an electronic system that would tell instantly whether the problem was in the domain of the company or the customer. If it was on the customer’s side, no truck would be sent. An experiment with the new system in Santa Clara, California, resulted in a 30 percent reduction in the number of trucks dispatched.⁵ The truck drivers who are replaced by this automation won’t be able to get new jobs with PacBell driving trucks. They will need other skills.

Higher Educational Standards

New jobs are being created, but they require higher levels of education than the old jobs they replace. United Parcel Service, for example, increased its force of information-technology employees from ninety in 1983 to three thousand in 1994. But the clerical and delivery personnel they replaced could not qualify for the new jobs without acquiring new skills. When AT&T replaced fifteen thousand long-distance operators with automated equipment, the operators could not go out and get jobs as installers of wireless communications equipment—at least not without extensive retraining.

BROAD SKILLS AND PEOPLE SKILLS

Technical skills will be valuable in the future, if they are skills that can be applied in a broad variety of situations. Skills that are applicable only to a single job are vulnerable to advancing technology. If technology provides a new way to do the job, the skills become obsolete.

People skills, however, never become obsolete. That’s why it’s important that you acquire leadership and interacting skills if you expect to get ahead. They will serve you well in a wide variety of organizations. As the concept of teamwork and cooperation takes hold in organizations of all kinds, the ability to work with others becomes paramount. You’ll need to be able to interact with others, provide leadership within team settings, communicate clearly and assertively, and be at home with computers. These skills can provide you with the flexibility to move into many different roles in many different organizations.

Anthony Patrick Carnevale, in his report “America and the New Economy,” expressed it this way:

As employees become more interdependent, the softer social skills become more important. The technical knowledge necessary to perform a task must be accompanied by the more complex capability for playing roles in the context of a group. The fundamental social skill is the ability to manage oneself. Self-esteem is the taproot to effective management, and self-loathing is the most fundamental impediment to successful interaction with others. Self-awareness is also critical to self-management. Employees need to understand their limits, ability to cope, and impact on others. The ability to set goals and motivate oneself to achieve is critical to being a team member; lack of motivation or goal-setting skills can create an undercurrent that can undermine team accomplishments.⁶

Trends in Career Paths

Here are some of the changes in career opportunities as Carnevale sees them:

• Brokers will replace bosses. While the new economy will still need managers, professionals, and service providers, their roles will change. Instead of being bosses, they will be leaders, “easing transactions in internal and external networks, communicating new information and learning throughout networks, and leading and developing other employees.”⁷
• Technical specialists will replace less-skilled labor. Technical specialists include manufacturing engineers, health technologists, and, in banking, specialized bond traders. Computer and communications workers will grow in importance as businesses use high-tech equipment to substitute for human brains and muscle. The manufacturing technician, aided by an array of technology, will be able to perform the work once carried out by manual laborers, material handlers, machine operators, repair workers, and even supervisors. Computers and advanced information systems will make it possible for one customer-service professional to do the work once delegated to lower-level clerical, sales, and delivery people.
• Manufacturing personnel will replace craft workers. As businesses develop innovative ways to add value to raw materials, manufacturing processes will replace craftsmanship. Already boxed beef is making an end run around the local butcher. The housing industry, one of the last refuges for craft workers, is beginning to shift toward manufactured components that are assembled on-site.
• Teams will replace individual professionals. The trend is toward professional generalists, assisted by teams of technical specialists and paraprofessionals. Technicians, armed with flexible information technologies, are performing functions once performed by scientists and engineers. Professional bond specialists and currency experts are working with senior bank managers. Paraprofessionals are showing up in medicine and law. The traditional classroom teacher’s functions are now being carried out by master teachers, apprentice teachers, teachers’ aides, and media specialists. In most settings, but not all, the generalist commands the highest income and the senior role.
• People will become interchangeable from one industry to another. Data-processing experts, for instance, may move from a bank to an insurance company to a parts warehouse without having to undergo complete reeducation. Those who prepare for this type of environment will find that they have considerable flexibility in charting their career paths.
• Education will replace experience. The “battlefield commissions” by which faithful workers used to advance through the ranks will be a thing of the past. No longer can a young person start in the lowliest job in the mail room and progress toward upper management through sheer loyalty and hard work. Increasingly, education will be the key to advancement.

This has been a jarring change for many corporate people. As Fortune reported:

For decades, until January 1988, a big New York bank promised workers that anyone with 20 years’ experience would never be laid off. … Says a human resources executive at the bank: “That was okay when we were clerically intensive and needed the mindset of a grunt. But as the organization changed in the Eighties and technology became important, we found that the people who came for security wouldn’t adopt new ways of doing things.”

The Entrepreneurial Mentality

The new business environment means that negotiating the corporate ladder can be almost as tricky, and as risky, as following the entrepreneurial path. In fact, businesses increasingly are seeking out people with entrepreneurial instincts. They are giving them a stake in corporate success while requiring them to share in corporate risks.

So whether your vision calls for growing your own company or working for someone else’s company, you will need to develop the capacity to take intelligent, innovative risks. You will also need to make education a continuing, never-ending process.

Dream big dreams, plan for their fulfillment, act to implement your plan, and learn constantly. Then, when the dream becomes real, dream another dream. Life goes on, and change is inevitable. Don’t let it frighten you. Stay in control, and it will be change for the better.