2011 Prospects
- No surprises: it'll get tougher. Economies will slowly improve but the continued effects of globalisation, the huge cost of managing a person in a business and advances in technology will mean it will not be easy being an employee looking for a long-term, sustainable, enjoyable career.
- That's why having got smarter in 2010 you will get wiser in 2011. 2011 will be the year of colossal investment in your greatest of assets: your thinking. Creative, analytical, critical, lateral, empathetic. Thinking.
- 93% of businesses will continue to behave in a disastrously stupid manner. They will assume that what worked in 1978 or 1989 or 2004 or even last week will continue to work for them in 2011. They will try and sell on price. They will treat their people as a commodity (human resources) and they will blame anybody and anything for their dilemmas.
- That's why whether you work for yourself or for a large corporation or somewhere in between you now know that you are on your own, you run your own business. And whether you have an apartment in Paris or Dallas or a terrace in Leeds, it is frontier time again and will be for the foreseeable future. You will have a plan, some goals, a 'can do' resourceful mindset and will reduce your dependencies on CEOs who are out of their depth and raiding what is left of the pension funds, politicians who will say anything for a vote and sheer undiluted 'hope it will get better' thinking.
- But the opportunities to meet the fundamentals of human needs whether they need education or entertainment or fresh water or consulting or great music or a meal out for two will remain. And the ways of providing for the those needs are more diverse and easily accessible than ever before. A start up nowadays simply requires you to er..start up.
- But you have got to be fast, lean, responsive and supremely agile. And the last twenty years of business and the last fifteen years of school/college has not been conducive to that kind of thinking.
- Now go put on Heroes by David Bowie. Play it loud. And start thinking, planning and acting.
Protocol 2011/Director's Cut tomorrow.