More and more people in the workforce and most knowledge workers will have to manage themselves. They will have to place themselves where they can make the greatest contirbution; they will have to learn to develop themselves. They will have to learn to stay young and mentally alive during a fifty-year working life. They will have to learn how and when to change what they do, how they do it, and when they do it.

Knowledge workers are likely to outlive their employing organization. Even if knowledge workers postpone entry into the labor force as long as possible - if, for instance, they stay in school till their late twenties to get a doctorate - they are likely, with present life expectancies in the developed countries, to live into their eighties. And they are likely to have to keep working, of only part-time, until they are around seventy-five or older.

The average working life, in other words, is likely to be fifty years, especially for knowledge workers. But the average life expectancy of a successful business is only thirty years - and in a period of great turbulence such as the one we are living in, it is unlikely to be even that long. Increasingly, therefore, workers, and especially knowledge workers, will outlive any one employer, and will have to be prepared for more than one job, more than one assignment, more than one career.