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Transcript

Adapt or Die! · Humanity Working

• 0:04
  SPEAKER_01: All right, Adapter Die.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_01: That's quite the title.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_01: Where are we going with this one, Paul?
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: Well, uh, it's actually the title of my upcoming book, uh, so which is which is kind of fun.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um, we're almost certain we're shooting for a release of that book towards the end of this, uh towards the end of this year.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but really it's about a brutal truth, um, which is that the world of work is changing so much that if you're not truly taking control of your own career in this new world of work, then you're gonna be left behind.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: Most futurists believe that um about 80% of the jobs that are gonna exist in a decade don't exist today.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so the whole idea, the whole kind of like linear idea of I'm gonna be this in 10 years' time, 15 years' time, or 20 years time, if it ever did work, and I think it it it rarely worked for most people, most of us are not at 50, most of us are not what we intended to be at 20.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: But if it ever did work, it certainly doesn't work anymore.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so really the the premise of the book and the premise of the um of what we want to go over in in this part as we give people a little bit of a preview of it, is to is to basically say to people that there's one central tenant behind career planning, or there should be one central tenant behind career planning, and that central tenant is adaptability.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: And so we we we call the whole term adaptive career planning, is the is what we we do in our um in our masterclasses on this and our programs on this, is all centered around this idea of like your career planning is no longer linear, it is an exercise in adaptability.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_01: And I would say not only is it not linear, but it's not anyone else's responsibility.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I think a lot of times people said, Oh, I go into my company and then there's these pathways, there's this development course I can take, there's the leadership to and all these you know levels of taking leadership, and you expect, then I'll get a promotion, and then I'll do this, and then I'll do that.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_01: That linear path is not guaranteed at all.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_01: No.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: No, and it's uh, you know, a while back we had um Dr.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: Chaz, you remember we had on our uh on our podcast, and he talked about, you know, like the idea of a of you putting yourself in the arms of a company um and expecting that company to to kind of look after you and grow you.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: It might happen, right?
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: Elements of that might happen, but to assume that it will happen and to to leave your future in the hands of those organizations who really are not motivated by your growth, they're motivated by their profit, um, is is is kind of a dangerous game.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: So we're um so anyway, we're taking those those concepts and trying to help people figure out how are they going to thrive, not just today, but in the future, knowing that the future is deeply uncertain.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, uh ironically, if they did embrace the fact that individuals also have to grow within their organization and it's their responsibility to make sure that you know it's your responsibility and we work together to do it, they would grow.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_01: But that's a big ask, right?
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_01: So adaptability, whether it's cultural or infused, adaptability for the individual is the new career current currency.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's I think it's right, actually, because what's really interesting is that adaptability is the place where the interests of the individual and the interests of the team and the interests of the organization can all come together, right?
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: Because if you think about it, as an individual, selfishly as an individual, you need to be hugely adaptable in order to be able to deal with the fact that in 10 years' time, the job that you're thinking about today probably won't exist.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: As a team, you need to be able to, if you like the idea of your team consent continuing, if you're the manager of a team, right?
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: As a team, you're gonna have different requirements that are placed upon you over the course of this, uh, over the course of the next year, the year after, and so on.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: And the more adaptable you can be as a team, the more able you are to be able to throw yourself into what the next challenge is and the next challenge is.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: And then as an organization, it truly is adapter or die, right?
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: Because the business conditions that surround the organization are gonna be massively different.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: New competitors are gonna spring up, you're gonna have um new technologies that trans that transform the industry.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: Your company, you don't know what your company is gonna look like in two years' time, but you can guarantee that your company is gonna look different than it does today.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: And so in most cases, a lot of what happens in an organization is almost like an adversarial relationship.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: So think about pay, for example, right?
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, the company wants to pay you as little as possible and you want to earn as much as possible.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: But in this case, adaptability is a thread that connects the individual, the team, and the organization.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_01: So practically advice to advice to listeners, advice to the individuals that might have to figure this out.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_01: Must figure this out.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: So we broke there's not really time to go uh to to go through all of the different layers associated with this, but actually I just uh um a few weeks ago wrote a uh wrote a newsletter article about this.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: And it's I it's called the nine layers uh uh it's a nine layer model basically about adaptive career planning.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um and so we'll put that in the show notes to talk about these, uh, to talk about these nine layers.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: But really the way to simplify this down for the purpose of the of the podcast today, um think about this as a, yes, a mindset, an adaptable mindset, but an adaptable adaptability skill set that you are uh that you are building that starts from a basis of really understanding who you are, what you like to do, what type or how you like to work, the way you like to work, etc.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and the nature of the challenges that you want to fulfill over the course of your life, the challenges that are going to be uh that fit well with your personal values and your your personal value system, for example.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: And so you start from this process of like gaining a much, much deeper understanding of who you are and what your overall, uh the overall things that you want to achieve in your life, but critically not defined rigidly by a particular role.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: So it's no longer I want to be a chief financial officer, right?
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's whatever the whatever being a chief financial officer would would bring to you is the things that you that you want to be able to focus on.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: And then as you've got that sort of base layer, you then need to add additional layers of capability onto that, so that ultimately what you're doing is you're creating a set of skills that are surrounding that destination that you're looking to, uh that you're looking to get to.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: And that can take you in all kinds of different directions.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: So in my case, for example, I knew that I needed to do work that was centered around helping other people learn and grow.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: And right now I'm pursuing that as the CEO of a startup.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: But there are a million different ways I could have pursued that.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_01: Right, right.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's not the goal, it is not to be the CEO of a startup.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_00: The goal is to have a have meaningful, fulfilling work that helps other people learn and grow and be relevant.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: So it is that layer of capabilities, and it's also sort of changing what the North Star is in a way that is durable even as the world of work changes.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_01: Where, yeah, that's that's fascinating.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_01: And the survival, the survival skills are different now, right?
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: I love the way you say survival skills, because it's really so we focus very heavily on adaptability because adaptability is the skill.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: The related trait to that is resilience, right?
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: And resilience that we think of is the ability to intellectually and emotionally cope with change.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: Because as you're going through all of this, this change, if you're not approaching it in the right way, it can take a toll on you.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: So you need to be able to have that resilience and understand that adaptability is not the exception, adaptability is the rule, right?
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_00: Everything will be will be different.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: You don't, the thing you don't know is how it's going to be different, but you do know that it is going to be different.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's why adaptability becomes absolutely premium with the ability to cope intellectually and emotionally with it.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_01: And it's interesting too to think that, you know, it might come to certain people who've been in this space for a long time as a sort of an of course that's the case.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_01: But, you know, imagine you this is the first time you're kind of even thinking of it this way.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_01: Like, oh, that's true.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_01: I do have to figure this out, you know?
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it's it's especially whether it's people who've been in the workforce a long time that are having to deal with it as a switch in the workplace, or or you know, kids entering the workforce for the first time.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_01: You know, they they may have watched a parent or a you know, a mentor, a teacher, or something like that have a certain path.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_01: And you realize, well, that path isn't available to me when I graduate with my degree.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's going to be a very different, different, different thing.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_01: So this is uh this is a good one.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks, Paul.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you, Matt.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_01: Humanity Working is produced and edited for Billion Minds by Matt Neal.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_01: Our interviewer is Paul Slater.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_01: If you like this podcast, please subscribe, like, and recommend us to others.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_01: It helps us reach more people.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_01: If you want to learn more about how Billion Minds gets companies ready for the future of work by building adaptable, resilient employees, look for them on LinkedIn or visit their website at billionminds.com.