As a trend and futurologist, I am usually asked about “guaranteed future-proof training” in a university environment. In which professions will you definitely earn good money “in the future”? Which courses are guaranteed to lead to success? Understandable but completely wrong questions. Because there will no longer be “training” in the future. At least not in the old sense, as a life guarantee and success insurance.
When I look around in my current professional field - according to the criterion: Who is successful and who is not? - I find a clear trend: the trend towards detours, side entries, new beginnings. About two thirds of my friends and acquaintances who have found “their thing” professionally today had studied something completely different. I know management consultants who studied philosophy, linguists who work in management positions at large companies and former Romance studies students who are now startup company bosses.
I also know some people who are very unhappy in a job that they had educationally planned from the start. For example in banking.
In a working world of the future, the fixed professional and educational boundaries of the past will no longer exist. The complexity of the world leads to constantly new professional syntheses. A good friend now calls himself “Chief Evolution Officer”. I myself am a cultural anthropologist, author, management consultant and sometimes entertainer. But I also know craftsmen with a high level of education who have found their passion in an artistic activity, even though their heads are full of books and theorems. Both works!
Ask questions. Stay curious. Be critical without being “critical” (i.e. complaining and whining about everything). Understand the world at different levels of thinking. Above all: recognize and explore yourself and your own motives! In the corporate world of the future, these “qualifications” will be in high demand. That doesn't mean that what you study is completely irrelevant. But anyone who puts down appearance after appearance and in the end only lives for the “degree” will join the endless army of those who are still externally controlled in careers that no longer exist. Where there is more change, only talent can be the answer. Everyone has an inner talent, an energy vein, an inner motivational core. “Work in the future is the passion which pays for itself,” said the wise management consultant Charles Handy. Drastically translated: If you don't find “your thing”, you are guaranteed to be unhappy and unsuccessful.
Matthias Horx has been working in trend and future research for 20 years. His “Future Institute”, founded in 1999, advises and irritates many large companies. He teaches prognostics and early detection at various universities as a lecturer.
Photo: Klaus Vyhnalek
Become yourself! Tips from the futurologist for finding your own career.
