What’s in a conversation?
Here at RMIT FORWARD we’re curious.
From understanding the new normals of hybrid working, investigating how organisations can upskill and reskill their people effectively, reimagining and reinvigorating societies and guilds with technology, upskilling future leaders, building conversational AI skillsets to exploring and applying the skills that underlie creative practice — RMIT FORWARD explores the future of work.
While many of these problems might be better characterised as opportunities, what’s interesting for us is the questions they provoke and how we go about finding solutions.
We use a range of methodologies and tools to ideate and iterate towards solutions in collaboration with our growing ecosystem of Development Partners, Fellows and our knowledge and commercial partners. We believe that in a networked and interconnected world, we need to embrace value from many types of contributors. As we have said previously, the power of a vibrant ecosystem is its diversity — diversity which propagates innovative outcomes and solutions that would be impossible to predict from the outset.
And so conversations, particularly conversations with those with dissimilar minds, can help us to learn. As Tyson Yunkaporta writes in Sand Talk
“solutions to complex problems take many dissimilar minds and points of view to design, so we have to do that together, linking up […] to form networks of dynamic interaction”.
That’s why we created the Glass Tree* series of events.
Glass Tree brings together people from a variety of backgrounds with different roles and experiences for a series of closed-door conversations on topics that are top of mind for everyone in business today: transforming workplace and workforce, the skills we need for the future, the evolving landscape of diversity and inclusion or how to address the challenge of talent shortages, skills gaps — and many more.
By connecting those from diverse backgrounds, we have created a collaborative platform for sharing valuable knowledge and practical insights in a safe, reflective environment. Convened by our FORWARD Development Partners, these conversations are an opportunity to share honestly, using Chatham House rules, and held in our space in Carlton, venues in Melbourne and virtually.
One of our exciting new Glass Tree initiatives, the Reimagining your Future Workforce lunch series, which launch at the end of the month. We will bring together executive leaders and decision-makers from across a broad range of organisations and sectors to share knowledge about pressing workforce issues facing leaders of today. The focus of future Glass Tree sessions will be on leaders and the changing workforce, the intersection of workplace culture and hybrid working; how to lead a truly digital business and inclusion as a fundamental leadership skill for the future of work.
The Glass Tree series is part of the broader portfolio of events coordinated by FORWARD. We host fireside chats with our network of Fellows, an open and freeform forum for discussion and “working out loud” on the problems and questions we encounter in the diverse portfolio of work at FORWARD, and a diverse range of other events and programs
We welcome contributions from anyone or any organisation, that is interested in what we are interested in. If you would like to get involved, reach out to the FORWARD team.
*You might be wondering why these events are called Glass Tree. We’d like to claim that there is some meaningful brand resonance, but really it’s just because we liked it.
FORWARD is the RMIT Centre for Future Skills and Workforce Transformation.
Our role is to build an innovative learning ecosystem at scale, create new collaborative applied research and invent next-generation skills solutions that will catalyse workforce development in the future-oriented industries crucial to Victoria’s economic renewal.
We lead collaborative applied research on future skills and workforce transformation from within RMIT’s College of Vocational Education, building and scaling the evidence and practice base to support Victorian workforce planning and delivery and acting as a test lab for future skills to develop and pilot new approaches to skills training and education through digital transformation and pedagogical innovation.
We leverage RMIT’s multi-sector advantage to translate research insights into identifying workforce requirements and the co-design of practice-based approaches with industry.
