Over the last 30 years I’ve consulted and spoken for 126 different industries around the world. The range of markets is amazing, from coffee to gas turbines, commercial aircraft to automotive aftermarket, from knitting to golf course maintenance, they run the gamut.
The extremely cool thing about every single industry is the passion people have for their unique vocation. I’ve often commented that there is an association and/or trade show for everyone! I think that’s really great.
One common problem faced by too many of these industries today is filling the future work force. They are struggling to attract young people to consider these areas for their careers.
I remember a conversation I had a number of years ago while on tour of the Disney World Imagineering facility in Orlando. An Imagineer was showing us around the facility and took us on a catwalk high above the actual manufacturing floor.
He asked, “Do you see anything odd down there?”
I studied the area and admitted I could not.
“There is nobody under the age of 40 down there. We have a really hard time attracting young talent.”
I immediately thought, “Wait, DISNEY can’t attract young people to help design and build some of the most creative projects in the world?”
As I said, this is a huge problem. Many of my trade association clients have started initiatives to alleviate the problem, but there’s a long way to go. Maybe your company has this problem, too?
IMNSHO, young people of today need and actively seek amazing role models to show their possible future. These role models are today’s rock stars. Steve Jobs was a rock star. Jeff Bezos, Guy Kawasaki, Larry Page, and Sergey Brin are rock stars. You know who those people are. But do you know Casey Neistat, Lucas Cruickshank, Jenna Marbles, Lilly Singh, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Shay Carl, Simon Vallee, and Shawn Mendes? No? That’s because you don’t live in their world. They are today’s rock stars. And your possible future employees are following and getting motivated by them.
We need to create rock stars for our industries. Meet Simone Giertz. Simone is a 25-year-old inventor from Stockholm, Sweden. Well, maybe “inventor” is a loose term, but she should be a manufacturing industry rock star. She’s has over 200,000 subscribers to her YouTube channel and is known as the “Queen of Sh*tty Robots.” Watch this 29-second video:
How many rock stars does YOUR industry have?
