Originally published in the May 2004 Issue of Link & Learn. 

What if your job changed significantly -- or was being eliminated? What if you had to reinvent yourself to stay relevant in your profession? What if you had to change careers? Would you survive?

Some people actually do survive, and even thrive, in these circumstances. They flourish in chaotic times by (first of all) understanding the forces of change in a world where nothing is guaranteed.

Changes in job structure and availability have been caused by complicated events in the far-flung markets of the world as well as by those in your local community. Companies trying to keep pace have been forced to deal with economic fluctuations, industrial transitions and new ways of relating to their employees.

Let's take a look at the elements of "changing times." This is the challenging environment in which you are asked to continually modify your attitude and convert your abilities to new kinds of jobs and new ways of working.

These five fundamental events have created the new business dynamic:

1. The shift from domestic to global economy.
2. The shift from manpower to techno-power.
3. The shift from company-led to consumer-driven market forces.
4. The shift from the Industrial Economy to the Knowledge Economy.
5. The transformation of employer/employee relationship.

1. Globalization
In the U.S., Europe and Asia, there have been major increases in foreign investment over the past two decades. In the late 1980s, multinationals greatly stepped up their efforts to buy or build manufacturing and sales facilities in foreign target markets. By 2000, foreign firms, excluding banks, employed 6.4 million U.S. workers with a payroll of some $330 billion, according to the Commerce Department.

The easy movement of money and people across borders, the creation of multi-national alliances and strategies, the revolution in information technology and the convergence of foreign cultures and markets have combined to turn the world into one huge shopping mall. But globalization isn't a one-way street. Overseas goods, services, ideas and personnel are pouring into America just as quickly as they are being shipped out. Even small businesses now compete with and have access to products, labor, and new marketing techniques from all over the world. The same holds true for work forces. Employee pools, once thought of as geographically static, now migrate across international borders as easily as cars or computer chips. Companies can locate -- or relocate -- where the tax laws are most advantageous and where skilled, cost-effective labor is most readily available. Workloads can be spread over several time zones to cut production costs and facilitate delivery schedules. According to Forbes.com, analysts predict that by 2015, more than 3 million white-collar jobs in the U.S. will be outsourced to other countries.

2. The Technological Revolution
Advances in technology drive change throughout organizations, enabling them to improve their business processes by replacing routine activities with information systems and robotics. Instant electronic transmission makes it possible to move data entry jobs to any location on the globe.

Technology is also opening up a world of true employee participation in business decision-making. Intranet systems allow organizations to capture and share knowledge throughout the organization, to exchange best practices and good ideas company-wide, and to reinforce the corporate culture. That is the good news. The downside, of course, is the loss of jobs. Automated teller machines, robots, and electronic voice mail replace human bank tellers, assembly-line workers, and telephone operators who all used to collect paychecks and are now collecting unemployment.

3. Customer Power
Consumers around the globe are becoming relentless in their demands for quality, service, customization, convenience, speed and competitive pricing. And with global competition and the new technologies providing customers greater choice about when, how, and where they will receive goods and services, they have, in effect, become the determining factor in the success or failure of most organizations.

4. The Knowledge Economy
The shift from industrial to knowledge-based organizations has occurred with extraordinary swiftness in this country, and its impact upon our thinking about work and the workplace has been as profound as that experienced in the 19th century when America shifted from being an agricultural nation to an industrial one. In fact, the challenges of the knowledge economy are impacting every aspect of the workplace. Only a generation ago, trained technical workers were a relative rarity in this country. Now they constitute nearly a quarter of the total American work force.

The most highly skilled, the so-called "gold collar workers", are engaged in steadily more specialized activities, while the tasks demanding less-rigorous training (technical and legal research, lab analysis, computer programming and the like) are being handed over to a growing body of "paraprofessional" support workers whose roles in today's service/information world equate roughly to those carried out by skilled mechanics and quality control engineers in the Industrial Age. Specialized sub-contractors in a variety of technical fields are also proliferating as large professional organizations like hospitals, consulting companies, law firms, multi-national publishers and media conglomerates find that detailed work once done in-house can be done faster, more cost-effectively and often better by independent specialists.

5. The Changing Employer/Employee Loyalty Compact
In the "old deal" employer-employee compact workers were guaranteed job security in a safe, stable organization. Factory giants protected their workers by offering fair compensation and lifetime security. In the new deal, workers can no longer expect lifetime employment, nor can they expect stability. Change has become "business as usual." Employers, on the other hand, must deal with a far more mobile work force that has multiple loyalties and a different set of values than the previous generation.

The brainworkers of today consider job-hopping a normal route to professional growth and personal fulfillment.

Today it is more effective to think of loyalty in terms of flexible "temporary systems" -- much like a sport team or a movie company. Temporary systems by their very nature are relatively short-term liaisons between people constructed around a common purpose. These fast-paced, new systems require a new, enlightened form of loyalty based on shared values and goals, and mutual caring and respect.

Who's going to succeed in changing times?
These five forces are the defining events of the post-Industrial age, and together they have turned a once predictable landscape into a place where constant instability is the only "certainty" that can be relied upon. People who succeed in changing times have learned to turn instability to their advantage. They also know that change can be a linear progression or (more often) a discontinuous leap, and they are prepared for both!

Most people can accept a certain amount of linear, incremental change because it makes sense to them, but discontinuous change provokes confusion and anxiety. Discontinuity (nonlinear leaps --- such as when an industry, organization, or a profession completely reinvents itself) is intrinsically threatening. Yet, when properly understood, discontinuity holds tremendous potential for creativity and personal growth.

Charles Handy talks about discontinuity as an opportunity for learning: "Ask people to recall two or three of the most important learning experiences in their lives, and they will never tell you of courses taken or degrees obtained, but of brushes with death, of crises encountered, of new and unexpected challenges or confrontations. They will tell you, in other words, of times when continuity ran out on them, when they had no experience to fall back on, no rules or handbook." To proactively address change, here are a few questions to ask yourself. Better yet, gather your team and discuss these together:

• What trends and forces of change are currently impacting my profession? Especially -- What could happen in the future that would make my profession obsolete?
• What assumptions do I have about my current situation? (Write them down and then write the opposites. Analyze what would happen if the opposite assumptions proved correct.)
• Which skills and abilities are my current strengths?
• Which current strengths will continue to make me successful in the future?
• What new skills do I need to learn to stay valuable in the marketplace?
• What have I learned in the past six months?
• What do I expect to learn in the next six months?
• What do I need to unlearn? (Which skills are becoming obsolete? What practices -- attitudes, behaviors, work routines, etc. -- that worked for me in the past are no longer valid?)

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Carol Kinsey Goman, Ph.D., is an international speaker and consultant who helps individuals and organizations thrive on change. Contact Carol at Kinsey Consulting Services: 510-526-1727, CGoman@CKG.comor visit her website: www.CKG.com.