Walking through the Colorado Springs Airport the other day, on my way to notch another step in my march toward annual 1K status on United Airlines, I was stopped by this advertisement by Daniels College of Business at the University of Denver: The Top Ten Jobs of 2015 Don’t Exist Today. Though I don’t know what that statement is based on, at an intuitive level, I think it’s true.

So what are the implications?

1. Your job is not safe.  And it’s not just the threat of outsourcing to other countries, but that due to the accelerating change being brought to bear on business models by technology and globalization, the chances are pretty good that your job will be obsolete, extinct, gone the way of the dodo bird.

2. If you are training and getting educated for a job that exists today, you may finish up your training just in time to see that the job no longer exists.

3. If you’re starting college this year, chances are what you imagine as your best career path today may not exist by the time you graduate.

4. Our workforce is ill prepared for this challenge. Our schools are ill prepared for this challenge. Our government is ill prepared for this challenge.  Even business is ill prepared.

So what’s a person to do?

1. Accept the fact that jobs are no way to think about the world of work.  Think in terms of skill sets that you develop and apply to projects. Think about yourself as a Company of One (to borrow from the Army’s slogan).

2. Continually work to evolve and grow your value. Develop fresh ways to add value to an organization.  This will require constant, 24/7 learning.  This will require constant networking and observation to the innovative edges of your industry or field of knowledge.

3. Don’t think of yourself in terms of a job description but as a portfolio of knowledge, skills, experience, and value-creating capabilities that are uniquely, innovatively, and freshly applied to organizations and their challenges, to markets and their demands, to customers and their needs.

4. You cannot…let me repeat…you cannot look to a job or an organization as your source of security.  In this 2008 campaign season there is a lot of rhetoric about saving jobs, preserving jobs, bringing back the jobs.  Sure some things that are outsourced may come back and sourced once again in this country.  But I’m afraid that a lot of those jobs aren’t outsourced away from our reach, they just disappear forever because of the changes in how business operates and  produces value.  And no government, politician, union, or school can change that.

5. Teach these entrepreneurial and value creating skills and mindset to all young people.  (I’ve wrestled with this as my two oldest children are in college.)  We can hope for government and other institutions to come to the rescue, but I just don’t see that any institution can respond quickly enough.  It’s all happening too fast.   We must be more responsible than ever to grow our own ability to produce value.  It’s a risk we must take.  And as we’re learning and developing new adaptable ways to find tomorrow’s opportunity and  growing tomorrow’s skills for ourselves, my hope is that we’ll also be creating new opportunities for our neighbors.