There Is No Future In The Status Quo

There is no future in the status quo . . . Just ask Sears, Blockbuster, Novatel, Blackberry, Nokia, and the list goes on and on!

There is no future in doing things the way we have always done them! Status quo always ends in irrelevance and obsolescence!

As business leaders we need to continuously challenge ourselves and our organizations to innovate and improve. We need to shake up our industries and stop doing things because we have always done them that way. Rather, we need to start doing the right things smarter, more cost effective, more rapid, and error free!

For example, in the project engineering world, projects have continuously escalated in cost over the years. We have all heard of projects that started at $X billion and ended up costing 2 or 3 times $X billion! Now there are many reasons for this (refer to my mega-project article) but one of the major reasons is that we are simply not challenging the status quo. Instead, we doing things the way we have always done them . . . it seems more comfortable that way because change is uncomfortable!

Although an engineering project today has basically the same objectives as an engineering project 20 years ago, how we get from start to finish needs to be fundamentally changed! Engineering companies need to step back and re-evaluate their businesses to remove legacy mindsets, legacy tools, and outdated processes while implementing new and relevant ones.

Take the automation engineering world as an example. It is undergoing dramatic change because of technologies like:

How to Plug the Gaps and Stop Bleeding Money!

Most organizations are bleeding away profit through holes they don’t even know they have!

That’s right! If you are not periodically and systematically looking for inefficiencies, gaps, old processes, or broken systems, chances are, your business is bleeding profitability.

These holes that are bleeding profits from your organization are generally not a result of a deliberate or malicious act. They just form slowly as the marketplace shifts and as technology changes. These shifts and changes create holes that must be “fixed” in the same way a pothole in a road must be fixed!

$156,000 Timesheet

70% of Today’s Occupations Will Be Obsolete in 80 Years

Did you know that 70% of occupations in today’s marketplace will be automated or obsolete by the end of this century!

This is a stunning prediction that is hard to believe but it is happening before our eyes.

For those of you who find this hard to comprehend, this sort of job displacement has happened numerous times in the past . . . even in the last century. For example:

  • In the last 60 years, agriculture’s share of workers has seen an 80% drop!
  • Also, in the same period, manufacturing has lost 60% of its market share of workers

As technology, society, and our economies advance, the workplace has seen, is seeing, and will continue to see massive changes and upheavals.

Occupations That Will Be Obsolete or Highly Automated

How To Reduce Your Workload And Get More Done

Automation is to your time what compounding interest is to your money.Rory Vaden

 

How would you like to significantly increase the time that you have available in any given day?

I think most of us would jump at an offer like this. Think of all the things that you wish you could fit into your day but you just don’t seem to have enough hours to get them done. Whether it is work related, family events, time at the gym or personal down time, there are always things that get sacrificed because there are just not enough hours in a day.

This has always been an issue for me. According to the StrengthsFinder profile system, one of my top talents is Achiever. If I am not taking on and solving issues everyday, I tend to get frustrated and demotivated. It just kills me when activities that I consider to be low value consume my time so that I cannot “achieve” my goals for the day, week or month.