The Global Logistic Hub will impact jobs of the future - Pt 2

Fritz Pinnock, Contributor

In the decades ahead, the movement of goods, services, ideas and people around the world will get progressively easier and more prevalent than ever before. Ignoring globalisation as part of managing career advancement will be fatal and will severely curtail career opportunities for individuals.

Globalisation is more than just business, it is about culture and people.

Globalisation is about having an international network of contacts and friends.

Globalisation is a process rather than a fact or structure.

In the context of developing a career, each person will need to take his or her fate firmly in hand. While employers will sometimes create opportunities, individuals will need to turn to coaches and mentors for help. Every individual will have to put more emphasis on making himself, or herself, more employable.

Adjusting attitudes to work and jobs

Attitudes to work and jobs will have to substantially change during the decades ahead. Employees can no longer think in terms of simply being a worker earning a fair day's wage for a fair day's work. Employers will increasingly demand that individuals think and work entrepreneurially. Individuals will have to continuously keep asking themselves what makes them unique and enables them to make a difference in the workplace. They will have to learn to market themselves.

Understanding the business of the employer will be pivotal in enabling the business to make a profit. Today's brilliant people from bureaucratic organisations may feel like ducks out of water in tomorrow's organisations if they do not know the ABCs of profit-making and business continuity.

Working in an era of disruption, accepting false starts and working through mistakes will be part of the learning journey. This approach will be a critical shift in attitude for many individuals. Learning to celebrate a lesson learnt from failure, or a discovery that fizzles or goes up in flames, when put to practical application, will be a new experience for many.

More mastery at work

As more work becomes team-based, the future for individuals will be about 'selling' themselves to project leaders. Employers will no longer be satisfied to be told that a person has the required knowledge. What they will be seeking is higher levels of competency in every skill, for the purpose of maintaining the competitiveness of their business.

The pursuit of true mastery will be critical in adding specific economic value to the business where the individual works. Mastery will go beyond just having distinct skills. Individuals will need to be consummate professionals who work obsessively at their trade or craft. It will also be important to be able to thrive while uncertainty and ambiguity reign. Just as important as the ability to do one thing extremely well, so it will be essential to do a dozen things at once, and change course without hesitation.

Technology on the go

Technology and technological change will dominate the working landscape. Many individuals may be past their prime when it comes to understanding, learning and applying new technology. But they will have little choice. They will need to pick up new technology on the trot and apply it to their work. Employers will expect individuals to invest in their own training in new technology as it hits the market and seeps into work processes.

The pace of technological change, whether through advances in information technology, biotechnology, or such emerging fields as nanotechnology, will certainly accelerate through the next 10 years. There will be greater synergies across technologies and disciplines. Such synergies will pave the way for further advances that will impact work and jobs in ways that are possibly unimagined right now.

In the whole area of lnformation Technology, work methods are likely to be effected by advances in microprocessors, leading to new opportunities in real-time speech recognition, translation and robotics. As more intelligent robotics are introduced into a wider spread of manufacturing, there will be shop floor implications for manufacturing, logistics and inventories. At the same time, technological advances will increase demand for a highly skilled workforce and add to the volume of change in workplaces.

Networks to get more important

Nurturing and developing ever widening networks of friends and contacts will be increasingly important if the individual hopes to thrive in tomorrow's world. More than ever, information will reach individuals faster through personal networks.

For individuals past 40, it will be invaluable to be plugged into networks of the under-40s. For the under-40s, it will be equally important to be connected to the over-40s. The under forties will generally bring with them technology, modern business ideas and processes whereas the over-40s will bring with them know-how, experience and years of expertise.