Where are the Business and Career Opportunities?

Perhaps people are looking in the wrong place for work. I hear about plenty of successful individuals and businesses, but increasingly, most have one thing in common: They are not following traditional employment pathways.

The keys are "Be different", "Be relevant to today and tomorrow",  "Do things at the right time -being too early is just as bad as being too late"

Most people still have their mind set in the past when it comes to work.

The old idea of getting a university degree or apprenticeship, and having a guaranteed job simply does not work any more. If you can manage to push such prejudices aside and look at work in the context of a rapidly changing world, career opportunities can take on a whole new appearance.

I sawtwo interesting things in the media recently:

1. Quotes from "Whakademia" -a new book out of NSW University Press http://newsouthpublishing.com/articles/wrong-sort-knowledge/

"Academic experience: general disillusionment, over-regulation, stress, casualisation and a drift away from the profession."

"Worrying is the demise of non-compliant academic eccentrics who have been largely displaced by acquiescent operatives."

"Despite all the talk about excellence, innovation, choice, opportunity and flexibility, it seems that many students graduating in business, journalism and other courses are less than job-ready."

This is worth a read!

2. There was also an interesting article in the Australian Magazine (in the Australian Newspaper on Saturday). Loretta Napoleoni - Economist answered 10 questions, and these were some of her comments:

- On the Chinese being better Capitalists than westerners: "They can get things done much quicker than us"

- On western politicians having lost control of their economies: "Politics in the west has turned into a form of show business"

- On the Australian workforce: "More jobs will go offshore to Asia, real wages in the west will decline, the middle classes will contract, trade unions will die, but there will be a growing class of super rich."

- On the future of debt laden economies: "Stimulis packages can work if focused on lifting the productive sector. Encouraging consumers to spend more and rack up debt is a terrible waste of money."

- On whether the Euro will survive: "No -Within the next three to four years there will be a severe contraction across the world economy."

I see these as further indicators of a massive restructuring of global society that is underway - perhaps on the scale of the industrial revolution - and the fact that most people are simply not recognising and adapting.

I think this situation presents us with fabulous opportunity; but also a challenge to create all new ways of doing things. Tweaking the existing political, economic and education systems will probably be insufficient.

Now is not a time to be working "within the system"; Now is the time to be creating new systems!

by John Mason

Principal and Publisher at ACS Distance Education www.acs.edu.au