From “knowledge worker” to “learning worker. What you seek from your team may be all wrong!

I took a minute of contemplation after going through some excerpts from Jane Hart’s Modern Workplace Learning.

Although I wanted to call all of my startup founders immediately, I waited until the next day to ask them the following question:

Who do you work with — knowledge workers or learning workers?

They didn’t get the question, but postulated that knowledge is the new world currency; teach a man how to fish instead of giving him fish, kind of thing.

A fisherman can be taught to become a good fisherman and then a great fisherman. But at the end of the day all he possesses is knowledge of the art of fishing.

But what if her heart desires to become something other than a fisherman?

Here is where the learning worker paradigm comes into play.

With the availability of smartphones as our constant companion, knowledge seems to have become obsolete…or, at the very least, easily accessible.

If we take this as relevant, then the law of diminishing returns takes a very powerful turn here: Everything that is available in abundance loses its marginal value.

Or as Jane nicely puts it:

Knowledge is a commodity, to be the smartest person in the room all you need is a smartphone. What is far more valuable than knowledge is the ability to learn new things and apply those learnings to new scenarios and environments. This is what the employee of the future needs to focus on, “learning to learn.

This draws very powerful implications on the nature of employee development.

• Learning is no longer the sole responsibility of the HR or training department.
• Leadership and people skills become more important than ever.
• Workplace learning is no longer a formalized activity but a continuous experience where knowledge comes from everywhere including experience and self-contemplation.
• Adaptability, mindfulness, the ability to change your mind, extracting serendipity from
• Networks, “life-hacking” and control over biases have never been more important before

A learning worker is what Anne Dwane had to transform herself into when she became the CEO of Zinch.

“Most folks would agree that learning is good,” she says. “The catch is that modern life hones skills — like pattern recognition and selective attention — that are at odds with learning. With hectic personal and professional schedules, we live much of life sensing and responding, only engaging in creative or critical thinking occasionally.”

Pattern recognition and selective attention is what distinguishes the new learning worker from everyone else. Such misfortune that our education systems promote linear thinking instead of the valuable trait of knowing when to change your mind or adapting to problems.

Skills are already being replaced with robots and artificial intelligence. In Australia, for example, 40% of Australian workforce is under direct threat of their jobs being permanently replaced by machines and AI. I am afraid to contemplate those numbers when it comes to India.

However learning how to learn, or in other words learning how to evolve is still a rare capability mastered by few.

The key to being adaptable is taking yourself out of autopilot to shift into curiosity.

Curiosity is not something skill-based workers experience often isn’t it? But then is skill what our universities should be primarily teaching our future generation or something else?

Your thoughts?