Goodbye old school – by Philip Dodson
The old system has run it’s course now, education, politics and business.
I am 46 and have grown up in a world where most of the values and ways of doing things were drawn from the 1800s. From a time of empires, industrialisation, capitalism, socialism, communism and so on.
The world is now entering a new age – a digital age and an entrepreneurial revolution. But even more so, it’s entering uncharted territory, 7 billion of us, dwindling resources and global issues, that need a global approach. A totally disengaged and disillusioned young – who can’t relate to the old world.
We are at a fork in the path – many will want to selfishly lead us onwards back to the old school nirvana.
The old system is stifling the creative thought, supressing the changes we need and strangling radical new ways of doing things.
Party politics no longer engages with people, as we have heard it all before, very little fresh thinking, corruption, people on all sides who are not experiencing the world as most are.
Mainly policies that are there to ensure re-election in 4-5 years time, rather than the right policies. One lot promises one thing for their followers, the others in their dogma disagree with it all and then come to power and change it. Often regardless of whether or not it works.
None of this is a political statement – it applies to all of them. The system no longer works. We need business leaders, community leaders and others to take over and work on policies together – ditch left, right centre and whatever else – bring in common sense.
Then turning to education – this is kicked around like a political ‘football’ with little real thought to the end product. Children are growing up with smart phones and tablet PC’s, yet we send them to school and sit them down to read text books. The system is largely preparing children for a world that doesn’t and will not exist by the time they leave. Is it not that 20% of the jobs today didn’t exist 5 years ago?
Just think of the technological changes that are happening, think about the entrepreneurial revolution – the fact that within 10 years self-employment will be the norm in the developed world.
We need to get entrepreneurial leaders involved more and more in education. There are already some great examples of this happening . However it is still scratching the surface.
Then the system of doing business is still very old school – however within commerce, there is a different order, here customers make the choices. Old school ‘HMV’s’ didn’t adapt and they failed.
In business some of the old ways of sales, marketing, running business, employee relations, working environments and so on, have been ditched by forward thinking organisations, as they have seen that they have failed. Just look at the rise globally of co-working and collaborative businesses.
The old system of greed and win at all costs, which blossomed in the 1980s, has to a greater or lesser extent created a great deal of the global issues we face. It for me it symbolised the last death throws of the old system, which came to an end in 2008.
With self-employment likely to dominate the next decade and beyond, there is a chance that the new ways of collaboration, sharing and helping others to succeed could well be the catalyst for massive global change in society in general.
We stand at the fork and it’s time to say ‘goodbye old school’ and start to bring back a society not driven by short-term greed, but one driven by helping others, sharing, re-creating communities and one that realises that prosperity is about people not materials.
Philip Dodson 