I recently shared a memory on Facebook of reading The Inevitable. It is one of the few books I’ve read in one sitting (Hillbilly Elegy is another one). I both remember sitting on the beach reading most of it in one sitting and then excitedly telling my senior class about it the next week.
Part of the fascination was how radical Kevin Kelly’s thoughts seemed. And yet, they seemed prescient and dove-tailed into insights I remember from Seth Godin’s Linchpin. I read that book in the better part of a day by the Waterford Lakes neighborhood pool shortly after finishing my first year of teaching. I read a lot by bodies of water it seems.
In some ways, these two books are related. They both underscore the need for one to consider the exact value you bring to the job market. In Godin’s book, the emphasis is on adding value to your employer beyond your job description. Anyone who can fill the job description as stated is hire-able. Whoever goes above and beyond becomes a linchpin over time.
I applied that to teaching, using the assumption that most people with a similar degree could have mastered the content. I also figured that anyone who knew the content could lecture for hours on it. So, I intentionally fostered a safe environment for discussion about serious issues, made humor a significant part of my podium side manner, and made it a point to connect with students outside of the classroom.
In essence, all the most valuable things I do as a teacher are not in my job description. I do the things in my job description, but what I really do is somewhat intangible and fairly irreplaceable. It may sound like hubris, but no one will ever teach Bible quite like I do at the school where I teach. Part of that is because no one with my level of education would usually be content to teach high school Bible part time. The other part is why Kevin Kelly’s book is important.
As we look ahead, merely being a linchpin won’t be sufficient to keep your job. There are plenty of people who do their work in ways irreplaceable who have been out of work since mid-March. The reason is that the nature of their job wasn’t quarantine proof. Some people saw this coming, but not really, and not in the economic details. I am thankful that my work was able to jump to Zoom for the most part. Other sectors weren’t as fortunate.
Now, one could spin Kelly’s book as a manifesto to make sure your work is technology proof. Don’t pursue a job in a career if a robot could take it from you later on down the road. You initially think that’s a far-fetched idea, and then Kelly walks you through some technological innovations just on the horizon and you pause and think that maybe the guy who founded Wired magazine might know a thing or two.
Kelly though is a fan of technological innovation, and has more faith in the algorithms than most. It couldn’t hurt to assume he’s mostly right about what’s ahead, since the downside would be planning to major in a field that will be irrelevant when you graduate.
What we are facing ahead is the prospect of automation. With a currently incurable virus looming in the present and the future, things that can happen online or can be automated will be. At first it may be for health and safety purposes, but it may prove so efficient going back is not necessary.
To use one example, I drive on toll roads frequently in Orlando. Since things ramped up with COVID-19, they stopped having toll attendants in the booths. I have an EZ-Pass so I don’t use them, but now everyone either has to get an EZ-Pass or deal with the tedium of being billed later. By the time it’s considered fine for attendants to return, the system may have advance to make their role obsolete. By the time we moved away from Dallas, they had several roads where paying the toll directly just wasn’t an option. Orlando may follow suit, not out of direct innovation, but out of innovation in the face of adversity.
Not that anyone aspires to be a toll attendant, but you get the idea. If I were to jump back to my domain, teaching that is just focused on content delivery has an expiration date. A robot can and will do that better than I do, and in a more focused manner, resistant to rabbit trails and random joking around. But the latter is what makes my teaching human and unique and hopefully builds rapport with students. A person can also read the room and change the subject for the day based on non verbal and intuitive information. A teacher, if they’re good, doesn’t just show up and dump the knowledge from the textbook into the students’ minds and get on with their day.
The reason I’m thinking through all of this is because I’m assuming pivots lay ahead for many of us. It would be foolish for me to just assume normal life and normal work will resume in the fall as if nothing happens. It is better to assume we’ll have 18-24 months of disruption (or more) and plan accordingly. If I’m wrong, I’ve lost nothing. If I’m right, I’m ahead of the curve.
Around 18 months ago, I read Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s Antifragile. Because you’re curious, yes it was by a body of water, on a small island in the Bahamas no less. I didn’t know it at the time, but our life was going to be very disordered over the next 18 months. But, the subtitle of the book charted a path forward: “Things That Gain From Disorder.”
Fragile things do not do well when disorder or chaos is introduced. Antifragile things don’t just survive the chaos and disorder, they benefit from it. Knowing that, I gradually started thinking in those categories and sought to not necessarily minimize risk in life choices, but setup systems that not only resisted disruptions but could capitalize on them.
As a result, in many domains I began separating out goals and systems, knowing that many different systems can produce the same goals. If a system stops working well, it can be discarded and adapted. It would be foolish to scrap the goal because the system isn’t working, unless of course the goal needs revision.
A system in this season should be able to jump to different platforms if necessary. As an example, I teach the Bible by sharing the screen of my iPad to a TV in my classroom. If I couldn’t do that, or when the connection is weird, I pass out individual Bibles to each student. When class is cancelled and we’re at home, I start a Zoom meeting and share my screen and we’re back in business. The quality of the interaction is certainly better in person, but I’m prepared if we start by distance in the fall (thanks Google Classroom!)
Back in the day I used to work for Google Helpouts and taught private music lessons online. When our stay at home order started in Florida, I just moved my existing in-home lessons online. If I wanted to, I could probably add more students during this season. It would be rough for a beginner to start online, but for an intermediate student wanting to learn more, the platform works well with the right tools.
In essence, I’m taking some wisdom from my pastor and thinking through everything as if I had planned it. This is an opportunity to refine and redevelop things. If I treat it as such, make certain assumptions about the future that are antifragile, staying a linchpin in multiple domains is fairly inevitable. And since I probably can’t tie the three books together any better than that, I should probably get back to work.