The opening paragraph in an article on change, like this one, is where you can expect to read about unfulfilled predictions of change. They are blind alleys, such as these...

1. an anticipation that came to nothing;
2. an innovation that turned out not to be new;
3. a social change that petered out;
4. a warning dismissed as fraudulent;
5. some engineering that wobbled or collapsed;
6. some science that was never replicated.

They make popular stories because they are reassuring. The doom-mongers were wrong. So were the romantic optimists. Life goes on. We’re still struggling, but we’re still here...

plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

It’s a comfort. And – in case you need it – this article makes six attempts to get you out of that comfort zone.

1. an anticipation that is dangerously right
Social ethnographer Gillian Tett is among the few commentators to predict the credit crunch. The few documented risk-avoidance in financial services. But the many took no notice, because the anticipation didn’t fit with neo-liberal assumptions – about commercial expansion making everything possible. So the few were set aside. But they were right.

The consequences for work-life are out of control. And the damage to government budgeting is making public service careers work close to impossible to maintain. Indeed, private careers coaching is taking over – it’s already a big-dollar global industry. Would you say that any of this is worth our professional careers work attention?

2. an innovation that changes how people learn
Practically everything is getting digitised – from friendship to fine art. We can digitise relationships, games, and subversion. And what’s wrong with that? It’s how people find out what’s going on and figure out what to do about it. They can update by the hour – and often need to. So it’s easy to think of all this as no more than a useful tool – nothing to worry about, more of an opportunity than a challenge.

And for a time careers work colonised it, exporting what it does into its new handy formats – word processors, databases, spreadsheets. But people may well feel now that they’re getting as much information and advice as they need – and in interactive formats. And that digital territory is not only occupied by inhabitants, it’s invaded by predators. Professional careers workers can best help by enabling them critically to interrogate the information and influences they find. Time, do you think, to nail the myth that the digitised can replace the direct-and-personal professional?

3. a social change that brings cultural turbulence
In a stagnant economy opportunity becomes a zero-sum game – one person’s gain is another’s loss. Life gets more competitive. People pull back into a protected space. We become strangers to each other. Experience is documented as turbulent – unconnected, uncivil, unpredictable, and unsafe. Elites become suspect: politicos, attorneys, academics, and even medicos are second-guessed. But we like to remember that we are social animals. So, no worries, it’s just that we’re good at adapting to necessity.

But surely work-life is nothing if not social. Isn’t it done with, for and in response to other people? Yes, but with a tighter and more immediate focus – ‘me’, ‘my family’ and ‘our kin’. Conventional career planning doesn’t fit to that. And the background turbulence – some say ‘chaos’ – seems to undermine the possibility of a plan. Well, maybe not entirely; but, if not, isn’t it time to rethink what we can offer?

4. warnings that we dare not ignore
The most persistent warnings we hear concern well-being and risk – for communities, species and the biosphere. But such warnings are easily neutralised – by well-placed outfits whose interests are threatened. Anything can be rubbished by drawing on sponsored research, yielding large-sample ‘significance’, promoted by client-compliant consultants. The issues get ducked.

Is it possible that careers work colludes with some of this? The diagnostic apparatus of employability plays to the interests of competitive marketing. And labour market information doesn’t include ratings of work-life’s carbon footprints. And this is not just about emissions. Damage is done to African villages, developing world sweatshops, and home neighbourhoods – where lives are blighted and people are discarded. Careers work deals in such consequences – from the personal to the planetary. Any need, might we wonder, to rethink what we mean by independent assessment and impartial information?

5. engineering that changes more than we think
Alan Turing invented what we now call the computer. He also designed a test for knowing whether computers are intelligent – a test that no computer has ever passed. But global corporations use the technology to transfer gazillions of dollars from one side of the globe to the other – in micro-seconds. And, as you may have noticed, the same technology can quickly off-load any risk. But global corporations smile the same smiles and make the same promises.

Corporate wealth can exceed government wealth several times over. And the processing speed and power of computers explain much of that policy weakness and corporate strength. The rebalancing of power is transforming the working world – access to markets, cheap labour, polarised incomes, economic migration and global shifts in dominance. Would that kind of information be of any use or interest to your students and clients? Would it still be careers work?

6. science that changes everything
For the big scientific news we need to go back to Charles Darwin. His ideas never supported crude doctrines for the survival of the fittest. But genetics and neurology have transformed psychological, sociological and economic thinking. Nonetheless, at first his book The Origin of Species was thought to be useful to pigeon fanciers but ecclesiastically unacceptable. A kindly man, he had a bad time with it.

But he changed how we know ourselves – and knowing ourselves is a central careers work concern. The behaviour sciences that Charles Darwin has most influenced are the three that careers work most persistently calls on. Genetics is transforming the way we can talk about consciousness, freedom and autonomy. None can any longer mean what we used to mean by decision making. We’re catching up – but slowly.

where do we go from here?
Those times, they were a-changing – more than Bob Dylan, and a lot of other people, ever knew. The most dangerous negations of change rely on habits-of-mind – which are as dangerous for the future of careers work as for any. We need to reshape our expertise and restate our credibility. Might that mean...

• repositioning ourselves in relation to government and corporate interests?
• shifting focus from an authoritative content to a questioning process?
• establishing the social enterprises needed following worldwide privatisation?

It would be a start on a radically changing story. And we need that story to be distinctive – separating us from predation and constraint and pursuing ready-for-anything flexibility.

The word ‘career’ offers such a narrative. It means both ‘race’ and ‘journey’. Two stories, but one has the bigger and more distinctive idea. The clue is this: we can interrupt a journey with a race, but we can’t interrupt a race with a journey. The smaller idea can be carried by the bigger one.

And the only possible format for setting out a journey is a narrative. So, are you sitting uncomfortably?

You’ve guessed that I doubt that we’ve done enough on extending the careers work story. There have been, it’s true, one or two attempts to characterise careers work development as a paradigm shift. But they are exaggerated: more-of-the-same, but decorated with flattering bells and enticing whistles. A paradigm shift is a lot more troublesome than that. Charles Darwin finally faced it. The Descent of Man doesn’t do much for pigeon fanciers – but it changes everything else.

We’ll find out soon enough whether or not we are facing a paradigm shift. We’re bound to notice. My bet is that, at the very least, we’re on a paradigm shuffle.