Survive & thrive – The benefits of being the first to react.

By “taking the bull by the horns” and looking ahead you can choose the direction you want to travel.

“Necessity is the mother of invention”

If you are going to survive and thrive in this new world you need to be prepared to face the brutal facts and seek out the opportunities, not look for comfort. It is very easy to look at what has made you successful in the past and then lull yourself into a false sense of security that there will always be a market for whatever it is you do. A common and very understandable belief is that people will always want the personal touch, the computer will never be able to totally replace the human and people will never totally trust the results of the computer, at least not in the line of work that they are in.

Seeking out comfort is a very natural human reaction and one that is widely understood and used. We often refer to someone being “in denial”. Denial is triggered when a person fears the repercussions of something happening, and to avoid the very unpleasant consequence of anxiety that would be triggered by the fear of facing up to the possibility of whatever it is, they adopt the “ostrich position”. The reality is that just because a person goes into denial does not make it any less likely to happen. In some situations, to blank something out may be the right course of action. For example, you frequently hear sports coaches talk about “what is in their control” and what is “outside their control”, and “there is no point in wasting time and energy on worrying about things outside one’s control.” The difference is they will have considered it, decided there is nothing they can do about it and then parked it. So, when you are in business you must at least go through a similar process as to whether you:

• Take control and change
• Stick where you are
• Cease if you can see no way forward and cut your losses

By not considering the future and considering likely outcomes you will either miss out on opportunities, lose more money than you need have done, or if you are fortunate and you are going to be unaffected by 4IR, stay in the same place. What is undisputable is that the person who reacts first and seeks out the opportunity will be in pole position.

Previous page               Next page