New Awareness For A New Age

“We are at the threshold of a radical systemic change that requires human beings to adapt continuously.”  

For which Schwab adds…

“There is one certainty: new technologies will dramatically change the nature of work across all industries and occupations.” -Klaus Schwab via The Fourth Industrial Revolution

In a world caught in the throes of dealing with deep, exponential change from what is often being referred to as the Fourth Industrial Revolution; today’s individuals and organizations are going to need to be much more vigilant in building their awareness of these dramatic and often radical shifts across society and their coming effect on the future. As we move deeper into the Exponential Age and further into the Knowledge Economy, we can begin to see these dramatic and radical shifts emerging and feel the impact they are having on us and the world around us.

And while it may remain, at this point, just a flicker on the educational radar, we know that something is different, we can feel the changes, even those we can’t see or are even aware of.

Especially in regards to the world of work, which is undergoing a plethora of changes and disruptions brought forth on the shoulders of an accelerated and often turbulent rate and speed of change, along with growing levels of globalization, the scaling of automation, and an evolving and expanding infusion of artificial intelligence across society.

In many ways, individual and organizational learnability, adaptability and agility, have become the new norms of the day.

However, as Srini Pillay, assistant professor, Harvard Medical School shares in the McKinseyQuarterly, “If you say to people, “You need to adapt,” but you don’t help them learn how to build a change-oriented mind-set, it doesn’t really help. In fact, it hurts productivity.”

Engaging that learnability, adaptability and agility often begins with creating the awareness that allows to set the stage for engaging that “change-oriented mind-set.”  

As educators, we have to begin to equip ourselves with a greater awareness of the changes in the world of work and skillset shifts that are occurring alongside and parallel pacing those changes, if we are to begin to better support and guide our students as they manage the growing complexities of college, career and work.

As Amy Edmondson, Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management, at Harvard Business School puts forth in McKinsey Quarterly’s Getting Ready for the Future of Work, “We must view it as a race to develop institutions to support lifelong learning.  We need to move fast because we’re playing catch-up, and this is a much harder game to play; suddenly the numbers of people who need to learn fast are too big.”

As for these changes and shifts and the effect they are having on our individuals, organizations, institutions, and society as a whole, it is in seeing that our students will need much more college, career and work support and guidance as the reach of automation and artificial intelligence stretches outwardly and gains new and often unknown ground.

As Andrew Ng, Founder and Lead of Google Brain (Deep Learning) project, Adjunct Professor of Computer Science at Stanford University, Co-Founder of Coursera shared in AI is the New Electricity, “Whatever industry you work in, AI will probably transform it. I think today we see a surprisingly clear path for AI to transform all of these industries. So I actually hope that whatever industry you are in, you’ll figure out how to leverage AI, because I think it will create new winners and losers in almost every category.” For which he adds, “If any of you have friends or children or whatever studying in a med school, AI is getting much better at reading radiology images frankly. So if any of your friends are going through medical school and graduation with a degree in Radiology, I think they’ll have a perfectly fine five-year career as a Radiologist.”

As Bob Kegan, William and Miriam Meehan Research Professor in Adult Learning and Professional Development, Harvard Graduate School of Education shares in the McKinsey Quarterly article Getting Ready for the Future, “The number of employees who are operating in more nonstandard, complex jobs is going to increase, while less complex work is going to be increasingly automated. The time it takes for people’s skills to become irrelevant will shrink. It used to be, “I got my skills in my 20s; I can hang on until 60.”  It’s not going to be like that anymore. We’re going to live in an era of people finding their skills irrelevant at age 45, 40, 35. And there are going to be a great many people who are out of work”  

For which adds, “What are we going to do about that?”

As leaders, especially in considering this very non-obvious future, we must begin to determine what changes, and what stays the same. Then, determine how to create the systems, structures, processes, and behaviors needed to move us more relevantly and successfully towards that future vision and the outcomes we’ve determined, if we are to better support our students, parents, educators, leaders, stakeholders, and communities in moving forward through the uncertainty and ambiguity of an unknown future.

In response to these societal shifts, our students will need new and different supports and resources to guide them into the future. However, without greater awareness of these changes and shifts and understanding the huge impacts that they are having on college, career and work, we will struggle to provide the guidance that students are needing as they begin to consider how to traverse this very non-obvious and uncertain future they are facing. It is also in understanding that this guidance and support is not just a good to know, but imperative in response to the following research and data provided from McKinsey’s Education to Employment-Designing A System That Works report:

• Worldwide, young people are three times more likely than their parents to be out of work.
• Seventy-five million youth are unemployed (including estimates of underemployed youth would potentially triple this number).
• Half of youth are not sure that their postsecondary education has improved their chances of finding a job.
• Almost 40 percent of employers say a lack of skills is the main reason for entry-level vacancies.
• Fewer than half of youth and employers, believe that new graduates are adequately prepared for entry-level positions.
• Education providers, however, are much more optimistic: 72 percent of them believe new graduates are ready to work.

Which is why awareness is paramount and vital to supporting our students in navigating this very non-obvious future, especially regards to college, career and work.

Students shared in the same Education to Employment report, “Only about forty-percent say they would make the same educational decision if they could choose again what to study and where, and they rate themselves low on both general and job-specific preparation.” For which they add that, “Some forty-percent of youth also report that they were not familiar with the market conditions and requirements even for well-known professions such as teachers or doctors. Without this understanding, many students choose courses half-blindly, without a vision of whether there will be a demand for their qualifications upon graduation.” 

In closing, the report shared that, “Youth across surveyed countries said they were not well-informed about the availability of jobs or the level of wages associated with their course of study.”

While we will never have access to the tea leaves that provide us the insight of how to proceed in predicting and fool-proofing how we can better prepare our students for the future, it does not relieve us of building the awareness that allows us to better determine how to guide and support our students in determining their way forward into the future. While we may not able to support in the necessary jobs creation that may be needed, we can begin to consider how content AND skills development can coexist in ways that better prepare our students for the changing world of work. As well as creating our own individual and organizational capacity to provide guidance and support students as they consider their way forward in an unknown, ambiguous and very non-obvious future.

“Two related global crisis: high levels of youth unemployment and a shortage of people with critical job skills. Leaders everywhere are aware of possible consequences, in the form of social and economic distress, when too many young people believe that their future is compromised.”  -McKinsey&Company Education to Employment: Designing A System That Works

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The Slow Creep Of Disruption

Very seldom does disruption just show up unannounced. In fact, very often it has made its presence known far prior, only it just seems to be waiting backstage, gathering the support and momentum that will allow it to grab the headlines and then take center stage.

As an example of this slow creep of disruption, I walked into my nearby Sam’s Club yesterday and there was an obvious change to the checkout system. From a ratio of eight cashiers and two self-checkout stations, they had shifted to six check-out stations and down to four cashiers. While it may have caught me off-guard, it was not what many would consider disruptive in the least. But for me, that shift from ten cashier stations years ago, to then eight cashier stations and two self-checkout stations, and now to six self-checkout stations and only four cashiers stations is, for me, a representation of the slow creep of disruption that we are currently seeing across society. The type of disruption you don’t notice until it is already upon you and/or your organization. The type of disruption that you may notice and recognize as occurring, but does not register as threat of deep change until it’s too late and/or urgency of change is required.

However, it is a phenomena we have seen throughout the ages…

Take the telephone, for example, “What use could this company make of an electrical toy?”  -William Orton, President of Western Union in 1876.

Or the television, “Television won’t be able to hold onto any market it captures acer the first six months.  People will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night.”  -Daryl Zanuck, co-founder of 20th Century Fox

Or the computer, “There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.”  -Ken Olsen, founder of Digital Equipment Corporation

Or Google, “Google’s not a real company.  It’s a house of cards.”  -Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft

Or Netflix and Redbox, “Neither Redbox nor Netflix are even on the radar screen in terms of competition.”  -Jim Keyes, CEO of Blockbuster

Or Airbnb, “We have not seen a direct effect (from Airbnb) in any of our hotels.”  -Richard Jones, Senior VP and COO of Hospitality Ventures Management Group

It’s like the idea of the overnight success. It is a slow creep that hits suddenly. Much like in Ernest Hemingway’s novel The Sun Also Rises in which they ask the character “How did you go bankrupt?” for which the answer comes as “Gradually, then suddenly.”

But even though we see it coming, it doesn’t always register, for a variety of reasons. Whether it be that we don’t want it to happen, we don’t believe it will happen, or it seems improbable that it will ever happen.

Disruption often comes through a lack of awareness and/or willingness to see or acknowledge that change is occurring and then realizing it will most likely have an impact on our individuals and our organization. Disruption is often in an unwillingness or awareness to prepare, for change is coming.

Too often, we don’t feel the necessity or urgency to or for change, either individually or organizationally. We allow our past successes to serve as an imaginary insulator that tells us that we survived changes in the past, just as we will survive changes in the present and the future. It is that “this too shall pass” attitude towards the disruptive forces knocking at the door and standing on the horizon that moves us away and disengages us from the proactive urgency that allows an organization to meet these headwinds of change straight on.

The slow creep of disruption always seems sudden when it kicks in, because that is usually the time when we begin entering the elbow of the curve, the time that we see the exponential shift, when we turn from the “gradually, to suddenly.” Which often becomes our reality due to lack of awareness or willingness to believe, well before the curve or “suddenly” is upon us, that it this change is coming or even happening over time.

Instead of determining how external change can and often does require our own internal shift or change, we take a “baton down the hatches” approach to disruption and hope that it does not have effect on us or our organization. Or, in many ways…

We try to insulate, instead of determining how to change and innovate.

Moving past our insulating and “baton down the hatches” tendencies to look towards finding opportunity in the midst of the chaos that often surrounds any type of disruptive shift is vital. Vital that we use those change forces to fill, rather than deflate our sails.  Or as the quotes says…

“Not all storms come to disrupt your life, some come to clear your path.”

We must then begin to realize that change, often disruptive and accelerated, is definitely upon us and our organizations. The lifetime of today’s Fortune 500 companies has dropped from 75 years in the past to 15 years or less in today’s volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) environments. Requiring a whole new level of individual and organizational agility, adaptability and learnability. As Pierre Nanterme, CEO of Accenture shares, in example of today’s digital disruptive creep, “Digital is the main reason just over half of the companies on the Fortune 500 have disappeared since the year 2000.” As Robert J. Shiller of Yale University adds, “We cannot wait until there are massive dislocations in our society to prepare for the Fourth Industrial Revolution.”

In many ways, there will be not only a period of initiating to the speed of today’s world and how quickly change occurs, but a time of new learning, requiring reskilling and upskilling, all preceded by a time of necessary unlearning.

As Mark Bonchek shares in the HBR article Why the Problem with Learning is Unlearning, “The problem isn’t learning: it’s unlearning.  In every aspect of business, we are operating with mental models that have grown outdated or obsolete…” For which Bonchek shares that the process of unlearning has three parts:

• First, you have to recognize that the old mental model is no longer relevant or effective.
• Second, you need to find or create a new model that can better achieve your goals.
• Third, you need to ingrain the new mental habits.

In this process of unlearning, Bonchek reminds us, “So as you being unlearning, be patient with yourself – it’s not a linear process.” For which he adds, “In this time of transformative change, we need to be conscious of our mental models and ambidextrous in our thinking.”

Awareness and preparation are critical as we orient ourselves with the deep changes and exponential shifts that we see happening across society, as well as the pace at which they are occurring. As Gary Coleman of Deloitte Consulting shares, “The Fourth Industrial Revolution is still in its nascent state. But with the swift pace of change and disruption to business and society, the time to join in is now.” For which Meg Whitman, President and CEO of Hewlitt-Packard Enterprise adds, “You can always go faster than you think you can.”

Which will require not just continual investment in strategies and structures that allow for the sustaining of best practices, but engaging in the experimental, discovery learning that moves us and our organizations into next practices. It will be those mindset shifts that will allow our individuals and organizations to continuously improve and evolve more relevantly into a very non-obvious future.

“Status quo – you know – is Latin for ‘the mess we’re in.'”  -Ronald Reagan