The New World of Work an e.book by Aron Solomon, JD all rights reserved, 2011, Aron N. Solomon, JD Prologue Who Should Read This Book? This book is designed to help those who want to navigate the new world order (wow - that sounds significantly more ominous than I had intended) of work. Iʼve been a teacher of some sort my entire life. In a formal sense, I was a teacher, coach, senior administrator and head of school in boarding schools. The part I most loved was the role of mentor. I still stay in touch with many of my students and when we meet or chat they always want a piece of advice. So, I see this book as a way to bring together many of those pieces of advice into something coherent that might apply to a range of people, young and not so young. The world has changed. The days are long over when people would leave school or university, get started in a career and stay in that job for life. The new world economy means no job for life, no job security and, as many pundits have opined, the advent of jobs that have never been seen before. This means a greater need for a much higher level of qualifications, and significantly steeper competition for each job in the marketplace. The workplace has a rapidly growing level of uncertainty, and a speed of change in the work place that is truly phenomenal. This book provides a fresh look at the changes that have occurred with work. It comes from the perspective that the changes have been positive and constructive for individuals, opening up the work environment dramatically. The new work place provides a broad and deep range of exciting opportunities that never existed for those who are able to be open to this new reality and embrace change. Some of these options include: • A greater job variety; • The freedom to explore new, creative options; • The ability to follow your passions and pursue these as a career; • A much greater chance to travel for work, and to more more exotic destinations; • The ease of setting up a global team; • New jobs that have been created that never even existed just a few years ago; • Far greater range of possibilities for women; • A re-examination of “retirement” – after all, why retire if youʼre having fun? The way technology and society have changed so dramatically over the past twenty years means that the world really can be your oyster (or you shellfish of choice). Those in the know can take advantage of this and find a career that they love, founded in their true passions. The evolution of technology has paved the way for a great variety of adaptations in the ways that people can work, offering compelling new options for those who are willing and able to step outside of the box and embrace them. This requires the casting aside of some of the more traditional approaches, and a willingness to accept new ideas. This book is suited to anybody who is struggling to get a handle on the emerging new world of work, or trying to find their way through the difficult field of career management in an environment that still has some traditional boundaries and ideas about “the way things should be” relating to work and careers. It may be of particular use to the following groups, but is certainly not limited to these audiences: • University students; • Recent university graduates who are having difficulty finding jobs; • Graduates of Masters and Doctoral programs who are having difficulty finding jobs; • Workers who are just a few years into their careers and are looking for change or more fun in their work; • Mid-career workers who have been laid off; • Older workers who thought they had retired but are again forced to work due to economic conditions; • Those who simply want to find a new way in life; • Those who want to set up their own business. This book should be used as a starting point for exploring all the new possibilities that technological and societal changes have afforded us, as they relate to the work place. It can be used as a stepping stone to finding a new career, or for opening oneʼs mind to the opportunities that may exist. It can be used as a brainstorming device, for prompting new ideas. The book may also be used as a no-nonsense guide for those who wish to change their lives and move into a new job or career - one that they can be really passionate about. It provides an explanation of the ways in which work has changed, and practical advice about where to start in carving out a new job or career. It explains how the Internet can be used to find opportunities that have never existed, and how organizations are changing to adopt these new possibilities and ways of working. The book also gives straightforward advice for those who want to start a new business in a field that they love. It gives structured information about how to start working toward building up a global team in an inexpensive manner, and how to focus on your core competencies for a greater chance of success with any new venture. As you will see in the final section of this book, I give you all of the tools you need to hire other to increase your productivity. I have been outsourcing pieces of my professional and even (on a small scale) personal lives for years. It works and I will take a deep dive into showing you how. Certainly, this book is not exhaustive and should not be considered as such. It is not a book aimed at the people I work with every day - those who I might describe as technology wizards. It is aimed at an audience of readers who understand something about technology and are open to learning much more about how and in what context available technologies might fit into their lives. The speed of change dictates that in a year or two an even greater array of options (many of which revolve around technology) will be available to those with open minds who are able to step away from the traditional expectations of society and how they govern the world of work. Those who are savvy will keep on top of the changes and succeed in growing and developing the career of their desire. Enjoy the read and good luck! Chapter One The Realities of Todayʼs Economy - How We Arrived Here “The times they are a-changinʼ.” Robert Allen Zimmerman, a.k.a. Bob Dylan (1964) Introduction Never were the words of Bob Dylan more appropriate than in early 2011. While Dylanʼs observations were focused on the key issues of his times - racism, social change and poverty - the times are a-changinʼ today for different reasons, and the pace of change has become faster than ever before. It is hard to think back and even imagine the work environment as it was 20 years ago, let alone the 46 years that have passed since Dylanʼs revelation. The rate and pace of change in this time has been phenomenal and, arguably, unprecedented. Organizations have two options: keep up with the pace of change or fail. The forces of this change have been technology and social drivers. The rules of technology and the societal changes have been profound and broad, completely transforming the way we view our world and interact within it. Technology Think back for a moment to what your relationship was with technology say 30 years ago. There were very few computers in homes, not many more in offices, email was a rarified thing for the technologically elite, there was no Internet for the layperson, no instant messenger, no voice over IP, practically no mobile phones, no fax, no scanner, no digital photography. Looking back another 10 years beyond and youʼd find homes in many cases without telephones or a color television set. Itʼs important here not be be stuck in a North American mind set - try to imagine Eastern Europe even 20 years ago. Now think back to your relationship with technology 15 years ago. I graduated from law school in 1995. No one at my school used email. We used our own computers (I had a MacIntosh desktop) or one of the five computers in the lab. We submitted papers created on typewriters. I had no mobile phone and didnʼt know anyone who did. I didnʼt use the Internet until January 2006. I remember it clearly - I was loading an image of the Province of Quebec and it seemed to load pixel by pixel, leaving me to think “Nah - this Internet thing will never catch on.” Wow. Was I wrong. Technology has had a phenomenal influence on the changes that have occurred in society relating to the concept of work and how we actually go about doing our work. Communication frontiers have been almost completely broken down. They have not been entirely eroded, as cultural issues between people, organizations and nations can still lead to problems if differences are not understood, but for the large part - at least in relation to ease of communication - many barriers have disappeared. The baseline developments that have brought significant change to the ways in which it is possible to do business are: Computers Computers have been around for several decades but have only become a daily part of our work life since the mid-1990s. Computers allow us to create and save large volumes of documents in a standardized manner which allows others to be able to share them, use them, open them and edit them.