As a Futurist the most common question I get asked after a Keynote Speech is ‘What do you teach your kids?’ It’s an all important question when the we don’t even know what jobs will exist 10 or 20 years from now.
So when I was asked to do a TED talk, I decided to make this the topic:
Outgrow Your Job – What Pizza Taught Me About Career Reinvention. You can watch it below and you should totally watch it with your kids.
The quick summary of the talk:
We are all born entrepreneurs, it’s deep inside the human make up. But as soon as we enter the school system we kick it out of children and teach them to be subservient to the system. When society industrialised around 250 years ago it systematically removed independent thought and economic self reliance from our lives. Rather than generating income for ourselves with our skills (as bakers, farmers. carpenters, crafts people and smiths) we became widgets in the industrial system.
This stole something from us – it stole from us an understanding of the economic system in its entirety. We went from knowing a great deal about our local economy and business in general, to only knowing how to earn a wage in our chosen career path. And now, that job security is at an all time low – it’s time we found that entrepreneur buried deep down inside us all. Remember, every company wants to reduce labour whenever it can, to increase its income.
I actually think that being an employee might become an anomaly in the future. It seems that the evolution of technology is taking us back to a time where we will work for ourselves selling our skills and our product output as freelancers and entrepreneurs. If we do it right, this doesn’t mean we earn less, or even have less security. I’m saying it will do the opposite. We can earn more and have more security. Remember entreprneurs have lots of customers, while employees have all their risk in a single customer otherwise known as an employer!
The way I explained this type of ‘Systems Thinking’ to my daughter was through the process of growing an end to end pizza together. Through doing this she learned about working hard, self reliance, automation, artificial intelligence, pricing, entrepreneurship, selling and even why hipsters love organic food.
Take a look below – I’m sure you’ll dig it – pun intended!
Outgrow Your Job – What Pizza Taught Me About Career Reinvention