- How many new apps have you started using over recent years
to run your life or do your job?
What about your target customers?
What social media platforms, software, or payment systems
were they using in 2017 versus now?
How do you intersect and connect with them?
We are all adapting to new platforms
and learning new skills at work at a faster pace.
The half-life of skills,
the time it takes for a skill to become half as valuable,
has decreased from 10 to five years.
For technical skills, it could be half that.
Digitized operations,
continuing technological advances,
and changing behaviors
compel us all to adjust to lifelong learning,
which means understanding, planning,
and staying on top of our skills
as business requirements evolve.
This can mean pivoting and re-skilling
to work in a new area that has emerged,
or applying existing skills in different ways or fields,
or simply adding to our skills.
But the truth is that most of us don't actually know
even our top three skills.
Do you?
Why would you?
We got our jobs done,
which weren't defined by our skills,
so it didn't matter.
But now it does.
And the first important step
is to identify and record your skills and strengths,
which you may have some ideas about.
But whatever your resume describes
is likely well out of date
and doesn't generally pinpoint skills specifically
or reflect your actual range and depth.
Talk to your friends, family, colleagues, and your boss,
as they often recognize strengths
or other aspects that you are not aware of.
Create your profile,
and confirm that this overview and inventory
fully captures your current capabilities
about what makes you uniquely valuable.
Share these details,
internally if you're an employee,
or online if you're an independent worker,
to highlight the breadth of your suitability
for new positions and projects.
You can also emphasize skills
that you're not currently using
but would like to.
After that, plan for near
and medium-term learning and development,
which means research and reflection to figure out,
what skills do you need next
or are you interested to acquire?
Are there longer-term skills requirements to your job?
What about skills necessary for a desired career move?
This exercise is applicable
for every single person in your department or team,
as well as to assemble a current inventory of skills
if you do not have the software
that can help with the bulk of the initial work
to fill in the complete landscape.
Then arrange discussions with your reports
to help them go through the process
of exploring and planning their skills development over time
so that you can compile a comprehensive picture
of learning needs for your group,
projecting out as far as reasonably possible.
Then you can make informed decisions
about immediate and longer-term re-skilling
and up-skilling needs,
and how to fill the gaps,
generally, moving people internally
rather than hiring new talent.
The human-centric orientation of the new era of work
drives us to craft work around people's skills.