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Deer in the Headlights syndrome

Nokia's CEO Stephen Elop lamented tearfully; "We didn't do anything wrong, but somehow, we lost."

Borders's CEO Mike Edwards said "principles that he learned over an entire career suddenly didn't work due to what he described as a 'digital tsunami'."

J.Crew's founder Mickey Drexler confessed that he had "underestimated how Tech would upend retail".

These are just some examples of multi-million dollar companies that failed to keep up with the digital revolution. 

What's more worrying, is that digitalisation had barely reared its full potential back then. 

Today, the speed of change is way faster. 

Moving forward, we may see more giants falling onto their knees. 

"That's none of my business"

The big corporations of yesteryears are fighting to survive, what has it got to do with individuals like us?

I predict that we will soon face a similar threat.

Our education system is not keeping up. 

In fact, learning will become self-motivated and self-directed in the near future, simply because the rate of progression is too quick for us to structure official syllabus. By the time an author writes, edits and publish a textbook on machine learning, at least 50% could become obsolete. 

And yet, if we take a look around us, instead of nurturing the desire to learn, we still see parents force feeding their children with tuition and hard skills to cope with tests. 

We still see employees chugging in the 9 to 5, merely fulfilling their job requirements, instead of chasing new skills and keeping up with their industry proactively. 

FOMO

Thanks to social media, FOMO has become a regular part of our lives. We worry about keeping up with the Joneses, we spend the weekends consuming the latest films and dining at popular cafes or restaurants. 

FOMO isn't inherently bad. 

2020 had given us a taste of how fast the future will arrive. 

Cryptocurrency has given us a sneak peek into the ease of raising funds as individuals.

I think we'd had a better chance in the future, if we drive our FOMO in the right direction.

Let us not that deer that's caught in the headlights.

 

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