We Are All Potential Coal Miners

Coal miners have been much maligned and much glorified over the last few years.  Play with me a moment and see “coal miners” as a beacon of learning.  I am not talking about the actual individuals, but the group of businesses and workers they represent.  When I write that “we are all potential coal miners,” I am not suggesting that we might someday work as a coal miner.  I am suggesting that we all face the potential of working in an industry -- or owning a business -- that shifts dramatically, leaving us unemployed, underemployed, or ill-equipped to evolve and sustain our chosen way of life.  Odd positioning given my teachings, right?  Wrong!  

The problem is not that we have innovated ourselves out of jobs.  The problem is that we have not learned how to evolve our employment opportunities as quickly as we are innovating.  We have a continual learning issue, not an innovation issue.  We are taking too long to accept that innovation does not include job security. 

Take the pandemic. Sure, it’s a once-in-a-generation shift, but its seismic ripples will affect the way we work for years to come. It didn’t matter if you were a lead designer at an app-development company or a self-employed restaurateur, a ride-share driver or one-woman mobile hair salon. Whatever innovation was poured into our professional endeavors didn’t hold up against the unexpected. In fact, the pandemic forced a lot of us to re-innovate into business models that didn’t look anything like our previous work. Those who were able to adapt to life’s new circumstances fared better than others, but that doesn’t mean job security is out of reach for everyone. It just requires a sharpened ability to identify what we’re good at and applying those skills towards whatever may present itself, rather than pigeonholing our states of mind to the confines of a specific industry. 

United States industries, from coal mining to financial services, have been impacted by our lack of evolution. Current employment landscapes for automobile workers, shoe manufacturers, taxicab drivers and many in financial services (to name just a few) have shown us what can happen if we don’t anticipate major employment shifts. Jobs are not just lost; whole cities and their communities are lost.  

Here is the rub. The great workers of all the above-mentioned industries have shown us that you can produce at the highest level and be excellent at your job, but your job can still vanish.  They have shown us jobs cannot be protected from innovation.  They have also shown us we can protect ourselves by evolving our attitudes, natural strengths and knowledge. 

When someone shines a light on the path to success, pay attention.  Observing what works and repeating it, and observing what does not work, and avoiding that, are the easy parts of success.  Here are three suggestions to avoid becoming a coal miner:

1. Develop skills that stay with you for life. Use that knowledge in every career you choose.  Don’t train for a job. Train yourself for an abundant, ever-evolving life.  Start by knowing your natural strengths and using them to mine coal or learn to code.   The same strengths that help a coal miner succeed could be the strengths that help a coder create a new technology that transforms coal into a clean, reusable energy source.  
2.  Use technology to build community. People matter yet being tied to one physical community for life may make you vulnerable to career and employment obsolescence.  I am very much a people-person and need lots of one-on-one contact, so I am not suggesting that technology can replace face-to-face human interactions.  What I am suggesting is that investing in building relationships using the likes of FaceTime and Zoom.us (or any other face-to-face technology) will help you transport your family and friends wherever you go. 
3. Start a “What If” Club.  Networking does not have to be about business-card exchanges and boring speeches.  Create a group of people you want to learn from and those to whose lives you can add something. Center yourselves around one question:  What If…what if AI replaces my job?  What if I had to care for a parent but did not want to move across the country?  What if we thought of a new way of doing X, Y or Z?  Developing the skill of challenging yourself to expect change – long before it happens – will help you think of alternatives. 

Resources and examples to ponder:

https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/did-you-know-that-we-went-to-the-moon-before-we-put-wheels-on-suitcases.html

Bernard Sadow

https://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/05/business/05road.html