THE THIRD INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

 Every day, our politicians and press fill our newspapers, radios and TVs with short silly sound bites about the Economy and Job Creation….All we hear is the way to lowering unemployment is through creating more manufacturing jobs and putting people back to work in factories….and the sad story of those long-unemployed that have given up looking.  Sometimes those stories focus on the over 50; sometimes they focus on the 20-30 year olds that can’t find that first job.

And certainly, these are issues, and certainly business and government ALIKE, need to work together to improve the situation.  Repairing our crumbling infrastructure (yes, that means spend money to FUND these projects) make the most sense to me – it helps provide jobs and income for both ends of spectrum  of the unemployed.

But the argument never seems to focus on real questions.  Of those recent graduates, what have they been trained to do?  Can they not get jobs in their field, or at their salary expectations?  Have they been willing to look at other fields and lower their salary expectations? Are those that cannot get jobs holding degrees based on 20^th century skills?  Are there options available in other areas? Are they being enabled by parents who in trying to help,  allow them to move home, and not contribute in some way?   Or, how many of those unemployed that have quit looking for work have quit because they have become entrepreneurs and are now self-employed?  Have we honestly looked at education and how our next generations are still being taught by a method developed to prepare them for the manufacturing world of the early 20^th century?    I am not questioning the problems, nor the numbers, I am just questioning where we are putting the emphasis when we report it.

And I do so because as you have all heard me say over and over – the world has changed.  The paradigms of the 20^th century have shifted.  I hear little discussion on this, nor what we as a people are trying to do about it…other than grieve for the “good old days” , blame the “other side” and promise to bring them back.

So  I was pleasantly surprised a while ago to see the STRIB report on the “Third Industrial Revolution”.  Yes, this is reality!

The STRIB briefly traced manufacturing history from the first “revolution” in late 18^th century  in Britain and the mechanization of the textile industry; weavers cottages disappeared and the factory was born with the cotton mill.  The second phase is one we are most familiar with, when early in 20^th century, Ford created the moving assembly line and mass production was born.

And now, what I have been referring to as the impact of technology and digital-everything, combined with customization has created a new environment, that we as a people all live in, use, and push for more of the same…and yet, cannot make the connection with what that means for jobs and education!

The article calls this the “Third Industrial Revolution”.  Technologies have emerged with new software, new materials, better robots, new processes and have created a changing definition of Web-based services.    We all know this; we see the impact in each of our lives…and we think it’s a better world for it…we talk about great strides made in our understanding of our environment, our universe and our minds , but no one stops and reflects on what changes occur in the transition – never to be resurrected again. 

 Although this is my passion and my frustration with our transitional world today, I was surprised by one item in the article…”Some carmakers already produce twice as many vehicles per employee as they didonly a decade or so ago”.  Think of that impact without the emotion.  Are we each buying twice as many cars as we did a decade ago?  How does that all reconcile with the expectation that when production goes up/costs go down…and how in the world do we expect that manufacturers will employ the same amount of workers they did even at the beginning of the 21^st century-when it takes half as many to do the same job?!! 

 We are balancing on the precipice between two worlds – pushing for the changes and progress of the future, but seeing no connection to what that means in terms of changing needs that made up our 20^th century world.    We want the new and we want it cheaper and faster but we still train our kids for a life in the old world; we pick our leaders on who can best argue how they will BRING BACK the old and none of its fits together for a promising future. 

We cling to old educational theories; when we need to think about what we know today regarding how people learn and what the world needs as expertise; then craft a new educational system that works for the challenges that lay before us.

We judge the existing President on what Truman and Eisenhower, Kennedy , Reagan would have done – all of whom lived, learned, and governed in a world very foreign to the one in which we live today; we consider an alternative to run our country whose business experience all dates back to a time when laptops, and notebooks, I-pods and I-pads were not even words in our vocabulary – let alone what they mean and the changes that they have brought to the very “business world” he boasts about.   The list goes on and on.

In all arenas, we continue to give credence to a hierarchical approach that served tribes and families and even businesses well in the old days, but has been replaced.  To quote the title of a book resting on the corner of my desk, “Collaborate or Perish”.  Big Blue had to face that reality and the strides they have made in RE THINKING their world in a collaborative environment put most other major corporations to shame.

And although I know thought-leaders through-out the centuries have all experienced similar struggles as they toiled to bring about change, the difference is that the WORLD is changing at an exponential pace around us.  We do not have time to let the influencers in my generation die off; we need to get with the program.   While we doddle along patting ourselves on the back for what we accomplished in World War II, the rest of the world is moving forward – and soon will be moving ahead without us.  Let’s stop re-fighting old battles of the 1950s and 1960s and focus on how we as the US can contribute and influence the world of the future!

Let’s embrace the Third Industrial Revolution and contribute to it, not try to deny and destroy it!

GET OVER OURSELVES

As I read the title of Garrison Keillor’s Sunday column this week on healthcare reform, I anticipated I would be reading a humorous account of his time spent in my medical mecca, the Mayo Clinic, after he suffered a recent stroke. I scanned his view – waiting for the punch line. When it came, it connected so strongly to something I have been mulling over, I had to sit up and take note with my yellow high-lighter.

“Old men shouldn’t be allowed to doze off at the switch and muck up the works for the young who will have to repair the damage. Get over yourselves. Your replacements have arrived.”

First let me explain – I was born on the cusp of the Boomer Generation – technically a Traditionalist, but with a nod to them for saving our country and for instilling guiding values in all of us that followed them, I thought it was time for them to get out of the way-particularly in the workplace. I bonded with the Boomers, ignored the barriers, worked harder, out-strategized, built a collaborative network of support and succeeded. And I was blessed with results. I became a corporate director at age 28; and became a VP in a second company before I was 40. I left the corporate world as part of an executive team that had taken a sleepy $20 million dollar company to an industry leader with almost $1 billion of sales in less than 15 years. And what was among the motivators for my departure? I had no time for that generation entering the workforce in the early 90s- Generation X – after all, what did they know? Sound familiar? Different times, different terms, different outcomes, but it continues to happen throughout the centuries and we are in the midst of it happening yet again.

Event Marketing became my next life, and to succeed, I had to be open to new ideas, new technologies, and new thinking. Our industry is one of change and new trends and a continual search for what’s new. Most of the stars in our industry, like event marketing itself, are young-with little need to protect how we have always done it because it has not always been done. We all understand, as our objectives and audience change, so too, must we.

That discipline spills over into other arenas – so I have often found myself bothered by the disconnect that is happening in our world today.

After 9/11, we all heard and used phrases such as: “the world has changed”, what is the “new normal”. That, coupled with the exponentially increasing technological advancements in the last ten years, along with the arrival of the Millennials in the workforce, gave rise to “move forward in the 2lst century” and “21st century thinking”. And the devastating recession of 2008 accounts for another major shift as we “reset in the new economy”.

Generally, I tend to be a moderate. I don’t have any right answers to all the issues we face today whether that be the economy, the wars, healthcare, or anything else – all I have is a viewpoint, based on what I hear from the opposing sides. But like every other citizen in 2008, I had to make a decision between Obama and McCain. And I passionately chose change-away from the traditional-to collaboration, citizenship and community. Those were methods of success I had learned in the corporate world which are reinforced in the world of event marketing today. And with that choice, I understood success would come in small steps and would be hard to judge, as we were entering new territory. To achieve change, we would need to monitor and evaluate, adjust and continue to move forward, without digging in with yesterday’s out-dated thoughts.

Yet just eight months into a 4-year term, our hopes for change are being judged harshly, We are quick to question progress and find it wanting, justified because “WE KNOW FROM PAST EXPERIENCE”, as I heard this morning on Meet the Press.

What do we know from past experience? None of us have experienced this before. Nothing we have read, been a part of, or lived through can replicate this new world that is just emerging.

We have become the old men; is it time to get over ourselves. get out the way, and give hope and change a chance to play out?