Part 4 of 5 for the October edition of "Converging over Coffee"
It’s probably too obvious for me to say that the future for engineers lie in cleantech and infrastructure. I think this is where there is both the space as well as the need for creativity and innovation to take hold and create real tangible outcomes. Cleantech and infrastructure needs will continue to grow in importance in our lifetimes. While I believe that to the core, I must remember that there is still a personal element to how our interpretation of possible futures drives what we do today. And that’s what this is about.
Why future ready? We can all feel the pace of change these days… with the economy, within industries and in jobs. The practical thought is that being future ready helps ensure that we will continue to have a job, i.e. Safety in terms of career longevity. This is a more traditional, somewhat corporate view, but it’s a bit more nuanced when it comes to the interest of the individual professional.
For the individual, we want to be future ready because we recognize that the journey is more likely to be uneven than stable, that great opportunities for impact & growth are likely to stay hidden until we are sensitized to the world they exist in, and that we need a professional compass to guide us to the opportunities that we can thrive in. In other words, it is possible we haven’t come across the best / right opportunities yet, and having a sense of direction for our professional journey would help.
So which future? For some, choosing a future to be ready for and to invest themselves into seem quite easy. Chances are for most of us, the picture of our future remains fuzzy for a long time and we entertain a number of “could-be” scenarios along the way. Building a compass for these situations requires us to keep ourselves invested in the macro trends, responsive to the latest changes on the ground and receptive to behavioral shifts, not passively but by testing our personal and professional experience against new approaches and in new areas.
Listen to the signals. Experiment readily.
