Sunday 26 April 2009

The New World of Work

“The average knowledge worker will outlive the average employing organization. This is the first time in history that’s happened. … So the center of gravity of higher education is shifting from the education of the young to the continuing education of adults.” Peter Drucker, Business 2.0 (08.22.00)

The video below is pretty unnerving. How are you preparing to deal with the New World of Work?






“If there is nothing very special about your work, no matter how hard you apply yourself you won’t get noticed, and that increasingly means you won’t get paid much either.” Michael Goldhaber, Wired

My top tips for dealing with the New World of Work is:

1. Knowledge becomes obsolute very fast - Train, Train, Train
2. Be the best at what you do
3. Make sure what you do is relevant and in demand
4. Take a job for what it teaches you not what it pays - where will the skills leave you in 5 years?
5. Work on projects, not on tasks
6. Be as efficient as possible at dealing with routine, delegate or defer. Doing it should be the last result. Be ruthless with e-mail.
7. Ask lots of questions
8. Have lots of ideas
9. Make sure your core skills, presenting, negotiating and developing people are world class
10. Keep positive.

recommended reading The World is Flat - Malcolm Friedman.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

All right, so now we have a recipe to stay alive and possibly prosper in the near future.

How about the daunting effect all this has on our bodies and psyche ? Today we receive in excess of 25 x the information inputs we used to receive in 1985.

Already we are seeing material evidence of burnout and stress having an impact on the capacity to withstand these new rythms of work.

So probably a last point about Work Life Balance, that is balancing out personal, professional and social lifes..is necessary in your list.

have fun :)

Typo Patrol said...

Obsolete not obsolute.

CFJN said...

Glad to be of help with this post...

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