OUTsight/ Work to Learn
Photo by Geralt on Pixabay
Singapore, 17 July 2019 — Is your on-the-job learning cutting it for you now that ‘Work to Learn’ is replacing the ‘Learn to Work’ paradigm for successful careers?
The old paradigm
Once upon a time, careers were built on the paradigm that a valuable university education would provide a sufficient basis for success until one’s retirement.
What a truly different world we live and work in today, with a dramatically shorter shelf life of knowledge and skills.
Speaking at a 21st-century skills bootcamp for educators from ASEAN countries, Anshul Sonak, Intel’s regional director of innovation programs in Asia, painted a sharply different picture of the future of work.
Speaking at the event that was organized by the Asean Youth Community, Sonak characterized the new order for careers as a sequence of shorter jobs with multiple career shifts, all in a time span of what once constituted one single successful career.
A modern path
To navigate such a modern path of work, Sonak explained that change resilience might well be the most important skill to develop today, as we are poor predictors of the kind of jobs that will be in demand a decade from now.
In our brave new world, managing change, including of your own choices for career change, will therefore be front and center for your career success. That requires a continuous effort of updating your knowledge and skills through on-the-job learning. Hence the new paradigm of working to learn, rather than the earlier learning to work.
For senior professionals, managers, and executives, this is particularly challenging. It means that unlearning and relearning will be the order of the day. For many, the most effective way of unlearning and relearning will be to invest in learning together with younger professionals in their workplaces.
That way, they will set themselves up to discover new solutions and thereby help their business or organization to innovate and pro-actively meet the challenges of today’s market and world, including the growing demand for a people-planet-prosperity focus.
Community of leaders
As set out in Not on Google and More Mentor Modes, pre-launch discussions are ongoing for a community of leaders that will explore such cross-generational collaborative learning as an integral part of the new paradigm for the future of work.
Will that community be a good fit for you?
Yes — if you are passionate about sustainability and you are an executive, an expert, or an emerging leader with at least two years of working experience after your college degree.
Yes — if you are an engineer, city planner, water manager, social entrepreneur, or other development professional and you want to become a change maker.
Yes — if you are ready to get out of your comfort zone to take on the challenge of growing leaders around you while you work on your own communication and leadership skills.
After reading that, are you interested to join the discussion?
Membership of the community will be free of charge—not free of commitment. Sign up now so you can let us know what are you looking for in a peer learning community of sustainability leaders.