Change has changed
In the past it was ok to be mediocre. In today and tomorrow’s meritocracy, mediocrity sucks. The key to keeping up with the change in the world today is to realize that the qualities of change have changed.
No longer is there a welfare state there to support you. Countries from the economically libertarian Australia to the traditional epitomes of social democracy – Sweden, Denmark and Norway – are realizing that that with a maturing cohort of baby boomers on the verge of retirement, the welfare state as we used to know it is defunct.
Life is a now a DIY project. Change used to be evolutionary and appeared in a nicely Darwinian fashion. Today, 100 years of Western anti-competitive behaviour and complacency has compressed change and we are seeing an explosion around us. There are reports from Russia that Russian firms are no longer hiring Westerners, because they are deemed ‘not capitalist enough’. The wild east is surging ahead in Europe and companies are relocating from the old Europe to the New Europe to tap the benefits of lower company tax rates and cheap labour.
Moore’s law is an exponentially growing graph and the amount of genetic code data coming out of a single genetics research lab every day exceeds the total volume of information stored at the National Library of Congress. Reuters conducted research in 2005 which showed that a large proportion of the surveyed population were suffering from Information Fatigue Syndrome, with 43% reporting that their decision-making abilities were negatively affected as a result. This phenomenon is exacerbated by the paradox of choice phenomenon which states that our happiness is inversely proportionate to amount of choice we have. The more choice, the less happiness.
Change has changed and to keep up and stay ahead, it just isn’t ok to be mediocre. The 21st Century is Darwinism on steroids. The good news is that no one is inherently mediocre. Every human being has got a Mensa level IQ in some field of endeavour, and the key to success and happiness is to tap into that genius and explore it for all its worth.
Inherent inspiration as a result of exploring your calling trumps computerization and outsourcing any day. You actually need to position you brain from a position of strength. Playing in your thinking strengths, and aligning your work elements to them is not only productive, but in the context of 21st Century competitiveness, globalization, and thought apartheid, it is totally defunct to be doing something you don’t enjoy. So shape up, explore your innate strengths and ask yourself some cage-rattling questions to find out what you’re all about. If you are left-brained, have a Y chromosome too many, or lack any sense of intuition, or you just want to gain even further clarity, check out instruments like the Herrmann Brain Dominance Indicator and Myers Briggs Type Indicator, both of which are synthesized parts of the Funky Thinking methodology.
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