To Keep Your Job in 2025, Put Yourself Out of Business – Now

In 20 years, 50 percent of low-skilled workers will be disintermediated. No, we will not all be taken over by robots. But, tectonic shifts will rattle the labor market of the future. Even if you are a highly skilled worker today, that doesn’t mean your value won’t also wane.

Population growth is slowing – and this population is getting old. The Great Recession, shrinking labor force participation rates and the automation of, well, almost everything have been responsible for these chang-es.

The entire landscape is shifting and as a result, many jobs, and entire industries may be history, unless that industry is healthcare, social media, technology, engineering and energy. Some futurists feel we could see titles such as 3-D Printing Handyman, Digital Detox Specialist, Urban Shepherd, Corporate Disorganizer and even Digital Death Manager (don’t ask).

With all of this clamoring around technological disintermediation, let us not forget that a few simple truths remain:

• Strategy is 90 percent execution and 90 percent of execution is people
• Despite all of the technological innovations of the past century, people are the instruments of change and the ultimate differentiators and create the ultimate differentiators in business

Having said that, we are obviously undergoing dynamic job market changes and the unfortunate reality is you may or may not be employable in 2025.

Here are a few tips to staying relevant:

1. Put yourself out of business, now. Adopt an attitude of how you can disintermediate yourself, and at the same time be indispensable to the company. While this sounds counterintuitive, and arguably self-destructive, it’s not. Constant reinvention is your key to job retention. A forward-leaning, offensive approach is always your best defense for job progression. A relentless focus on skills development will ingratiate yourself to advancement.
2. Show insatiable curiosity. Be insatiably curious and learning agile. Your willingness and ability to learn from experience and then apply those lessons to succeed in new situations will keep you relevant – now, in 2025 and beyond. Continuously seek new challenges, solicit direct feedback, self-reflect, and get the job done resourcefully. Your learning should not end at high school, college, or even post grad – those are just plaques on the wall and the beginning of a leader’s journey. To continue growing, look outside your world to soak in the world. Listen to music, go to an opera, travel to a different country, take in the World Cup, read poetry, learn about history. Whatever you choose, establish a personal culture of learning.
3. Look for megatrends in the world. Find the megatrends within your career, at your company and in your industry, and move your skills to where those megatrends are. For example, consider the anticipated U.S. energy and manufacturing renaissance, the global water supply shortage, or a revolutionary new approach to education. Whatever it is, pick a trend and become an expert. Hone your skills to meet the megatrends that will impact all of us in five, 10 years, or even 25 years.
4. Find something you really like to do. Actor and comedian Jim Carey, in a recent commencement address, said, “You can fail at what you don’t want, so you might as well take a chance on doing what you love." A former colleague of mine once stated defiantly in a staff meeting, “You can’t fake this, people … I will find you out.” If you are truly passionate about your craft, you will absolutely make yourself timeless, essential, and valued by those around you.
5. Practice the ultimate contact sport: networking. Always be proactive. Don’t network just for a job, network to learn and the job will find you. Stay in touch with people who are lifelong learners and curious, those who have overcome failures, people who enjoy change and thrive in a world of ambiguity. What did they do to become successful? I can assure you, they did not maintain a one-lane highway approach to their careers; they tucked and rolled their way to success.

And always be thinking about putting yourself out of your job, before your job is gone.

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