"Job Shift":Crisis and Opportunity: Job Shift Is Driven by the Rapid Increase in the Rate of Change

The symbols for crisis in Chinese are made up of these two words:wei means "danger; peril" and ji means "opportunity; crucial point." However in reality, a crisis is still a dangerous state of affairs - regardless of the language. Crisis wei ji still means "a situation that has reached an extremely difficult or dangerous point".Zhuan means "turn into".So, if wei becomes zhuan ji a dangerous situation can become an opportunity.

Based on the book How to Prosper in a Workplace Without Jobs,Fortune’s widely discussed 1994 cover story,“The End of the Job”,(click here to read this important article) predicts that the job is not going to be part of tomorrow's economic reality. Our current economic “crisis” is an even larger one than most people have yet realized. We are losing jobs because it's a natural progression to a new economy based on rapidly moving trends in creativity, knowledge and productivity. There will always be enormous amounts of work to do, but it is not going to be contained in the familiar envelopes we call jobs. The change is going to be so significant that it will require a paradigm shift in our approaches to employment as individuals and government. The term "paradigm shift" refers to a certain thought-pattern — a radical change in personal beliefs, complex systems or organizations, replacing the former way of thinking or organizing with a radically different way of thinking or organizing. When a paradigm shifts, everyone goes back to zero because their business models, government programs, and employment skills have to change to meet the new view of the world. This means that Lee County -- if we as a community can make a paradigm shift about work -- will be structured in the future and educate our workers with the new skills required for an entirely different approach to earning an income. We have a great opportunity to emerge from this difficult time with higher paid workers and a competitive advantage. It will require a new kind of leadership. According to Dr. Margaret Schweer a colleague of Don Tapscott, one of the foremost experts in organizational transformation and the role of technology in business and society,

We believe the expectations of professionals in the workforce will be fundamentally and irrevocably changed; talent and resources will be sourced and deployed on demand; co-creation and transparency will transform the customer experience; and leadership will be continuously realigning and innovating.

This is what was called a Job Shift in that 1994 article by William Bridges -- "the workforce will be fundamentally and irrevocably changed: talent and resources will be sourced and deployed on demand." This shift is underway and this section of the e-Lee Dispatch will be devoted to helping the community make that change.

Job Shift Is Driven by the Rapid Increase in the Rate of Change

Keith Clark Lee County North Carolina

Time and Distance No Longer Protect Us From Change.

Our idea of a "job' was invented during the Industrial Revolution and is out of sync with today's technological and economic forces. Job losses continued after the end of the last recession. Jobs are not disappearing because of the move off shore where new production capitalizes on information in the hands of workers with no preconceived ideas. Usually as few as a couple of hundred jobs are gained when production moves overseas for every 1,000 jobs lost here.

The reality is much more troubling, for what is disappearing today is not just a certain number of jobs, or jobs in certain industries, or jobs in certain parts of the country--or even jobs only in America as a whole. What is disappearing is the very thing itself--the job.--Job Shift, page vii (Click here to thumb through the book)

We are no longer isolated from the increasing rate of change because of the rapidly accelerating pace at which knowledge is growing and how universally and quickly it can be transmitted.This is represented by one of the videos "Did You Know" below, which in one version or the other has been seen by over 4,000,000 people. The other makes an interesting response "Yes We Know". To understand where all those jobs have really gone we need to understand how work is changing today and what it is doing to those jobs." (Read the Fortune Article)You can preview the book, Job Shift, by William Bridges if you have a Google Account. (click to sign up as a Google Member)

The next post will have a video responding on the state of education in a changing world.