This book is great if you can get past the first part, which is a bit of a slog. Build for Tomorrow is a self-help career book by Editor in Chief Jason Feifer of Entrepreneur magazine. This book, like many other recent books, is about navigating change.
Feifer breaks down major changes into four major stages:
- Panic – The moment of “oh my God,” what’s happeneing?
- Adaptation – The process of learning to adjust to changes
- New Normal – When we acclimate to the transformations that are taking place
- Wouldn’t Go Back – The conclusion, when we find ourselves so comfortable in new circumstances that we wouldn’t want to go back to the old.
The problem, as I mentioned above, is his “Panic” section. In that part, most of his attention is dedicated to stories and anecdotes of enormous changes–the Bubonic plague, the introduction of the phonograph (and radio), etc. The issue with this section is that Feifer downplays this transformations as, “Oh, they were bad for a moment or for specific sectors, but look at all the great things that came out of them! Would you want to go back to pre-plague Europe, knowing that the plague dislocated the feudal system? Would you want to go back before industrialization knowing that we now live in a state of perpetual overdevelopment?”
We, as readers, are supposed to nod our heads and say, “Of course, now is better.” But, these transformations took decades, if not centuries. Those actually living through the plague or industrialization hardly reaped benefits from them–they were ages of untold suffering. The benefits were for those who came later.
Now, the parallel here is with the automation of most economic sectors, and we have no sense of when a new equilibrium might emerge. For all we know, it might be in a century, or perhaps never? It’s hard to say, even if it is very likely (essentially guaranteed) that automation will create new forms of labor as it wreaks havoc on old ones. Feifer, rather than dwelling too much on this point, and pushes us to look at the opportunity down the line and see how we can adapt.
His sections on “adaptation” and the “new normal” are, in fact, really good.
There’s a lot of good pointers here on adaptation, and I think the most important that stuck with me is his emphasis on why we do things. It is a fact that what we do will change. If we label ourselves as merely “academics,” “project managers,” or even “physicians,” we might just find ourselves out of a job in a few years. More important than the what is the how: what skill sets do we use, how do we accomplish our goals? Yet, these change over time, and this is really what’s transforming the global economy now. The shredding of the current hows are decimating the whats in the process.
Yet, we are still left with one question: Why do we do what we do?
If we think about a house, the what is decoration, the how is the scaffolding, and the why is the foundation. By keeping our why, we can weather any sort of storm, but when we focus too much on what and how, we risk becoming obsolete (whether from larger changes or a good old fashioned identity crisis).
After reading, I took some time to peel back the layers for myself. What do I do? Well, I’ve been a university instructor, a researcher, a program coordinator in an academic research center, a substitute teacher, and so on. The through line is that all of these placed me in the education/mentoring professions. So, my how is often through teaching, coaching, guiding others. But, why is this work so meaningful to me?
I took some time to reflect on my most meaningful work experiences, and all of them revolved around students or colleagues having things “click” into place in a way that excited them. It’s the sense of sheer possibility, of wonder, of curiosity, and of seeing how things might be different. This thought was sobering for me, I love seeing this moment. The greatest compliment that anyone could ever give me is that they “have never thought about it that way before.”
A few weeks ago, I was leading a high school class as students were trying to make sense of Shakespeare’s sonnets. I was filling in for the primary instructor that day, so the students weren’t familiar with my own strengths and competencies. They were working hard at making sense of lines and verses that were totally illegible to them, and the issue was not the themes or content, but the lexicon and syntax.
One student asked if I was good with poetry, and I told her that I was. She asked for help, and I asked her to read the poem out loud with me, line by line, while explaining what she thought it meant. With a few little nudges, everything fell into place, and suddenly she appreciated a work that she had previously seen as an opponent–it actually touched her emotionally!. After this, a few other students asked for help, too, and I coached them through the poems. The reception was not any different than the first student.
I left the class feeling energized and fulfilled: this is why I had entered education in the first place. It made me realize that, for a long time, I lost sight of why I loved education. Higher education can be a cynical place–graduate students are trained more in the art of critique than constructive creation, and this leaves its mark on education writ-large.
It made me realize that it simply doesn’t have to be that way: I can make a difference here, regardless of what sort of education work I find–training, learning & development, higher education administration, teaching, mentoring, and more. That feeling is why I get up in the morning, and it’s why I become so absorbed in my books; the sense of possibility and awe that understanding provides is not to be understated.
If nothing else, this book was a fundamental piece in helping me make sense of this part of myself. Now, it doesn’t matter the what or how, I can adjust my techniques and titles as long as I know I’m able to help others develop this sense of clarity. If I need, I’ll pick up new skills, reposition, and move forward. And this, dear reader, is what Build for Tomorrow is all about.
Should you stick through the techno-utopianism in the first quarter of the book, I think you’ll find it as rewarding as I did.