The static world of skills – We’re focusing on the wrong thing. Focusing on skills betrays a static view of the world.
The assumption is that if we acquire certain skills, we will be protected from the onslaught of the robots and the rapidly changing world around us. It ignores the fact that the average half-life of a skill is now about five years and continuing to shrink.
Our media and conversations are consumed by concerns over the spread of AI and what it will mean for jobs. I’ve noticed that the discussion quickly turns to what skills we will need to continue to be employable in the future, especially when the participants have children who are trying to prepare themselves for the world ahead.
It’s precisely that static view of the world that is our biggest barrier. We need to find ways to prepare ourselves for a world where learning is a lifetime endeavor. The question then becomes: what will help us to learn faster so that we can quickly acquire whatever skills are required in the moment?
The learning pyramid
In that context, we would all benefit by expanding our horizons and exploring the learning pyramid outlined below that can ultimately become the key to sustained and accelerated learning for all of us. Skills are at the top of the pyramid – they are ultimately what helps us to achieve impact and create value in a specific context.
Capabilities that drive learning
That leads to the third level of the learning pyramid – capabilities. Supporting the development of skills and a deeper understanding of our contexts are more fundamental capabilities. These capabilities can take many different forms but, in my mind, the core capabilities are curiosity, imagination, creativity, critical thinking and social and emotional intelligence. If we cultivate these capabilities, we’ll be able to quickly understand the evolving contexts we live in and acquire the skills that will help us to operate successfully in very specific contexts.
Re-thinking our institutions
At a broader societal level, the learning pyramid can help us to understand how our institutions will need to evolve to support life-long learning. If I’m right about the learning pyramid, our educational system will need to be re-thought and re-designed from the ground up. Rather than focusing on transmitting broad-based knowledge and building skills, our schools will need to shift their focus to cultivating capabilities and drawing out and nurturing the passion that is latent within all of us. Rather than giving out certificates verifying that specific knowledge or skills have been acquired, schools will need to expand their horizons and become life-long learning coaches that get to know each of us individually at a very deep level and can help and challenge us to learn even faster throughout our lives by building deep and long-term trust-based relationships.
ut, it doesn’t stop with our educational system. As I’ve written about elsewhere, all of our institutions will need to be re-imagined. Rather than thinking about learning as something that occurs in the occasional training programs that support a scalable efficiency operation, we’ll need to re-imagine our work environments in ways that can support scalable learning, learning that occurs day to day, on the job, in the work environment. If we’re serious about scalable learning, we’ll need to find ways to cultivate and amplify the passion of everyone who participates in our institutions.