Watch Out, Here Comes Generation Z
I was at a middle and high school talent show tryout this weekend and I was blown away by the level of talent these kids have today. I attended the same talent show last year and was likewise blown away by the talent. Technology and access to information is empowering kids today in ways we can’t imagine. As a Gen X’er, we started life by being the remote control (I was designated to sit near the TV and change the channel when requested) and we had a grand total of 4 channels to choose from. For the most part, our world consisted of our neighborhood (mostly kids like us) and an occasional vacation to nearby states. In our teenage years, cable TV came along and then MTV and thus we were exposed to a broader world through MTV (I guess that’s why we’re so warped).
Can you imagine growing up in the world today, where no matter what question, what curiosity you may have, you can find the answer in mere seconds, and you have access to that information on your phone or a tablet you can keep with you at all times. No matter what topic you are interested in, you can learn about that topic in an instant from millions of sources.
I am a registered professional engineer. To get that designation, I had to take a Fundamentals of Engineering exam, work 4 years under the supervision of another PE, and then take a Principles of Practice of Engineering exam. The reasoning for those 4 years of internship are to gain situational experience and knowledge. In the days before the Internet, the only way to gain that situational experience was to gain it through first hand experience, gain it from a few mentors or peers with whom you worked, or to read books. The problem with books as that there were few books with substantial depth of information on specialized topics (few experienced engineers had, or took, the time to write the books), and distribution of what books there were was limited. Today, you can learn an immense amount about deeply specialized topics from articles written by very experienced people because the ability to publish that information is so easy and available.
For instance, a Google search of “problems encountered with auger cast piles” returns 751,000 articles of information that match those terms (as of this writing). The first page of hits contains articles written by esteemed university professors, engineering practitioners, and contractors. Today, we have the ability to learn as much as we want on most any topic with a few clicks and the need or desire to learn the topic, whether it be auger cast piles or how to play the guitar (back to the talent show reference).
The kids of today are empowered by technology and access to information. If you are a practicing engineer or technician today, are you utilizing that technology and access to information to benefit your client and to provide a competitive advantage over your competition? Rest assured, the big boy firms are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on developing in-house software to make them more efficient, better informed, and to serve their clients faster and better. They are working to figure out how to use mobile technologies to empower their field staff.
If you are not employing technology and especially mobile technology and software to empower your employees to better serve your clients, the large firms who have plenty of money to invest and the up and coming millenials and Gen Z’ers will use that technology to better serve clients and take work. The systems and work flows of the industrial revolution (pen and paper) will not suffice today.
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