“Wherever you are in your career, you need to make sure you have a clear plan for the future”

This partly explains why I regularly move between sectors. I have a mind that feeds off new things, but once I have learned something, it is fixed. Acquiring knowledge is easy, but having the flexibility and discipline to update my knowledge and opinions to keep pace with new developments is much harder. Almost in a blink, I find myself moving from iconoclastic to conservative, from a proponent of change to someone instinctively fixed in the past.

As all scientists know, adaptation is key to survival. And never is adaptation more critical than at times of seismic change, during those periodic paradigm shifts when the old certainties are uprooted and replaced – tentatively – by new ones

I disguise my reactionary tendencies well, but they are still there. I remember in 2011 finding myself among a number of other middle-aged businesspeople cut from our hotel in central Birmingham by the riots taking place there and in other cities across the UK. As we sullenly sipped our pints as the bar TV screen showed buildings in Croydon and Liverpool going up in flames, the prevailing mood was clear: “Bloody youth of today. It’s a disgrace. Never happened in our day.” My riposte — that the youth of today were indeed a disgrace, but only because when my generation rioted we did so with a clear political agenda and not just as an excuse for looting – may have sounded different, but it was actually just the sound of another grumpy old man whining.

As all scientists know, adaptation is key to survival. And never is adaptation more critical than at times of seismic change, during those periodic paradigm shifts when the old certainties are uprooted and replaced – tentatively – by new ones. At such times, adapt or die is not just an easy cliché; it is a hard truth.

In my view, optometry is now entering into that moment. The causes are obvious. Technology is enabling core optometrist tasks now to be performed by machines. Online retail is threatening the High Street model. There is inexorable pressure placed on national healthcare by the combination of the pandemic and the current economic crisis. And there is increasing competition for skilled labour, leading to regional staffing shortages and rising costs.

We may begin to see a widening range of optical business models, with owners – and employees ¬– having to make hard-nosed choices about whether their future lies in being part of Optometry First-style initiatives or selling product

Individually, none of these may be enough to uproot the established order. But coming as a group, they may cause a fundamental shift in how the sector works. At the same time as increased staff costs and competition from internet sales affect profitability, the travails of the NHS offer an opportunity for optometrists to take on more clinical work, using time freed up by new technology to do more than merely focus on supporting retail activity. Taken together with the increasing corporatisation of the sector, we may begin to see a widening range of optical business models, with owners – and employees — having to make hard-nosed choices about whether their future lies in being part of Optometry First-style initiatives or selling product.

This is the context for this edition of OT. Of course, the above analysis may be wrong: the climate isn’t changing, and optometrists don’t need to consider whether to migrate towards a new future. But not taking steps to maximise your ability to respond to what may happen is a risky strategy. Wherever you are in your career, you need to make sure you have a clear plan for the future. No one wants to end up like one of the dodos in Ice Age, squabbling over the last melon.