"Only a certain kind of human can prosper in unstable, fragmentary social conditions," states sociologist Richard Sennett in the introduction of the essays that make up his book,  The Culture of the New Capitalism.

Sennett highlights three principal challenges that individuals must meet, arising from specific changes.  First, the way in which we view our careers has changed.  A short time ago, it was still possible to think in terms of enjoying a long career with a single employer, building presence and status over a long period of time.  The roles within such organisations were relatively clearly defined and the nature of the work would be consistent.  This is no longer the case.

Organisations tend not to take a holistic, whole-career approach to their workforce nowadays.  Indeed, why should they - particulary when the average tenure has gone down as compared with the past.  The tendency has been - except at the graduate recruitment end of the spectrum -  to buy in talent and skills as fully formed as possible, training up only where necessary for a strictly defined need.

In all but a few of the more enlightened organisations, developing a broader career management perspective has been neglected when set against the assumption that employees will inevitably move on and take whatever has been invested in their ongoing development with them when they go.

The impact of this is that individual has to learn how to manage their short-tem relationships while moving from task to task and organisation to organisation.  Individuals now has to construct their own career or life narrative since organisations seldom, if ever, provide individuals with a long-term career timeframe.

Adapted from Shape The Agenda, "Learning 2.0"