What’s the last big change you didn’t expect to see, but it came about anyway? Looking back a few years, how about some of these:
- Yellow Pages replaced by Google searches or asking Siri
- Customers talking to each other about you via Yelp! without you knowing
- Trade school graduates not considering a transmissions specialty
- Tablets and smartphones replacing desktop computers
- Teens not being eager to learn to drive or have their own cars
- Newspapers giving way to newsfeeds on Facebook
- Movie theaters with 14 screens showing 14 different movies simultaneously
- Garth Brooks becoming the number one selling live performer of all time!
- The USA not having a Bush or Clinton in the White House
- Saturday Night Live becoming the most popular political show on TV
- Computers becoming as vital as basic mechanics in transmissions
- Televisions being light and thin enough for a child to lift them
Futurist Daniel Burrus says we can predict what’s coming more accurately when we learn to recognize the difference between hard trends and soft trends.
A hard trend is something that’s such a strong reality that it’s unstoppable, such as the aging of the Baby Boom population: the 78 million people born between 1946 and 1964. They’re turning 70 at the rate of 10,000 per day, and their automotive needs are following their life changes.
So, if you plan your services around the needs of an aging driver, then you’ll still find customers for many years to come. But 70-year-olds don’t buy like 50-year-olds. Larger type on your web site and signs in the shop and on the service forms is just one of many needs coming up. How accessible is your waiting room seating and rest room? Do you offer WiFi for customers who are waiting?
On the other hand, a soft trend is one that could change or that won’t necessarily last long. For example, the recent increase in the popularity of tattoos. This trend will probably last for a few years and then diminish. Remember flat tops? How about bell bottoms? Pokemon?
Technologies tend to produce soft trends, too. Laptops and tablet computers are, like 8-tracks, cassettes, and CDs, simply a stage in the ongoing series of tools that help us access information or entertainment.
The use of smartphones is a hard trend. We’ll always want portable phones and we’ll always want information access. So, whether it’s a watch or a handheld phone or a wearable device, the tool will stay in demand.
What does this hard trend of technological advancement mean to you? It means that the technology you rely upon today will likely be obsolete within three years and maybe it already is. If you were to resist learning to use newer technology or advanced processes, then you also would soon be obsolete.
There’s also a hard trend of Millennials entering your workforce. Those born around the year 2000 are now in their late teens and they’ll be your next crop of coworkers. Period. You can’t change that.
So? Well, when Millennials grew up, cars weren’t nearly as important to their families as they were to yours and mine. We love cars. They’re our Freedom Machines. They’re a form of self-expression: “I’m a Ford guy,” “We only drive Chevys,” “Mopar Rules! Chrysler all the way!”
Millennials have Uber, Lyft, and carpools, so they put more emotional investment into their Apple or Windows or Samsung phones than into their cars. They still need cars, but they don’t connect with cars the way we do.
Burrus recommends that you start looking to multiple sources for news on what’s coming. He suggests that we learn to distinguish between hard and soft trends so that we can plan accordingly.
Most of all, he says we need to avoid assuming that we’re “learn-ed.” That’s the past. We always need to be “learn-ers,” seeking everything we can know as we continue to grow.
Jim Cathcart is a strategic advisor to ATRA and a longtime contributor to GEARS. His newest book — #17 for Jim — is The Self Motivation Handbook — get yourself to do what needs to be done — even when you don’t feel like it. Get yours today on Amazon.
