Future Proofing Me

I love Grand Final week… there judge me on that.  But the ethos of the Hawthorn Football Club this week has inspired me.  Hawthorn has heaps of issues this year, people being injured, key people, and out for long periods of the season.  They lost their coach for 5 weeks or so to sickness.  Yet they still found a way to win, to move forward.  The common mantra out of the football club for the whole year was “one soldier goes down, you replace them with another soldier” spoke to me.
 
It was right up there with one of my favourite sayings… “The graveyard is full of indispensable people”
 

 
This got me thinking about company success and about stability in a job or a career.  As I’m now in my 40s, (and now having the experience to understand how quickly 20 disappears past us) before I know it I’ll see the 50s coming up, I’m wondering what I can do to continue my relevance for my career and in my organisation.  The organisation is bigger than the individual I get that when I have my company hat on, but when I put the personal hat on. It’s a bit disturbing. a) Being 50 and b) being employable at that age.
 
People are easily replaced and I’m sure that if I got “hit by a bus”, (after a totally devastating few days in which the world would stop turning) the sun would come up, there would be work to be done and the business would carry on.
 
I’ve seen posts talking about how to keep yourself employable.  So here’s my theory.  It’s not that complicated.
 

Throw out your job description.

 

 
Whilst we wait for any HR people who are reading this to sit back up on their chairs or allow them to click off this post.  I don’t mean all of it.  I just need one key bullet point in this amazingly, consistently accurate document that has been handed out since the advent of the written word.
Your job description, well, anyone’s job description should be:
 

“ADD TANGBLE, VISIBLE, REAL TRUSTED VALUE TO THE ORGANISATION”

 
Everything else is pure fluff right?
 
I mean this is all our jobs right? My title may well be GM Recruitment, but if a Recruitment freeze comes on, and all I do is Recruitment, well I’m kind of limited in my future outlooks.  If I am purely a .net developer and the world stops using .net, I’m in trouble.
Like Hawthorn, people need to be flexible in the roles we all play.  I hope you’ve all read articles about roles that are here now that weren’t around 5-10 years ago.  Guess what? It’ll keep happening.  The world will keep changing.
Here’s my cunning plan to avoid being easily replaceable
What will I do? I’ll try to avoid contracting becomingadinosauitis.  I’ll keep taking things on, I’ll keep trying things (some will work, more won’t), I’ll keep finding ways to add value to my company.  The young kids will eventually beat me with youth, enthusiasm, and a cheaper price point, but I won’t be beaten on experience, wisdom (I’ll get there I’m sure), attitude and value add to any company.
What will you do?
 

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