Over the last few years, lay-offs, retrenchments, downsizing etc have been buzz words of sorts. An innumerable set of people have had to undergo the pain of going through something as tenuously torturous a process.
Jobs themselves are dying ! Dont miss this post
Of the many that had to suffer, few people quickly moved on. Moved on to find alternate jobs or other forms of income generation quite effortlessly.
Some have thrived, while the rest have languished.
More often than not, people that were laid off and couldn’t find employment elsewhere. In more than once sense they were ‘obsolete’. The skills that they possessed (or they could perceivably learn) were less than relevant to the needs of what what was required.
I bet you have seen this play over many times in many lives. The number of times this happens for want of ‘Knowledge‘ is very minuscule. The fact that ‘I have to constantly develop myself’ to stay relevant is well known. But knowledge is not action.
For example, nobody courts illhealth by volition. Yet diabetes, obesity and associated lifestyle diseases have come to be a mainstay in modern day life. A continuous pattern of bad food habits superseded only by a sedentary lifestyle, ensures that lifestyle diseases come to reside in bodies. Everybody ‘knows’ whats to be done !
A sedentary lifestyle and bad food habits do not happen ‘one fine day’. They slowly and steadily build into habits over a period of time. Bite by bite. What happens ‘one fine day’ is the introduction that a doctor does to people to diabetes and such deplorable diseases.
Career obsolescence is similar. It doesn’t happen overnight. It is a gradual process of erosion of relevance. If you are an employee perhaps a few questions on how relevant you are can set the ball rolling.
Perhaps you are the king of your department ? But is your department relevant in the overall scheme of things at your organisation ?
Perhaps you are the queen mother of a certain kind of technology / expertise area. How long has it been since you thought of how critical this technology / expertise is to business? To societies ? To communities ?
Perhaps you are the God father and the queen mother of this technology, the king of your department and lofty lord in the organisation. But how relevant is your organisation in the industry that you are in?
Complacence happens to be the first step in the doorway to obsolescence. Combined with a sense of ‘perpetual security’, that this moment seems to offer, the future can begin to look seductively beautiful.
Which ofcourse, it is , as long as you are reinventing yourself too.