Career Pathways. From Here to…..Where???
Everyone wants skills. And that’s what gets you a new job, of course..
But I’m not sure about career pathway models. Hmmm. It is good practice toward when we move on to the next thing and the thing after that. The muscle memory of a learning experience gets flexed, gets stronger, makes you ready to see and take advantage of the next opportunity when it presents itself.
The World Economic Forum says that 50% of skills acquired today will last till 2025. That’s pretty long. I would actually say the velocity of change is much faster now, but that is realistic enough especially when speaking about a whole organization.
Individuals seem to learn and apply much faster now than organizations who may need a consultant or team to develop the two or three year stategy — which will most likely be ready for iteration by the time it is distributed to the group.
So from here to — who knows? We may know short term.
Everyone is still talking about Leaderhip. And Leadership is important, as long as those Leaders let their Performers run free to innovate and iterate. This is a time where the Individual Contributor can often make more impact than an organization, at least at the time of this writing and I suspect this is the way it will be. Perhaps it is the era of the IC.
So what does that mean? What does that mean to a person who enters college as a freshman for a 4 year school? It can mean that by the time they leave, their major may be longer be relevant.
Hopefully, and this is the important thing, they learn how to learn.
Regardless of pivot or iteration in their industry of choice, they know how to be agile, live with ambiguity, live with the continuum of change. That’s all we know — that we need to live with constant change. It’s the only thing that is constant.
That’s ok, because with ambiguity comes opportunity. But approaching college, if that is the choice, is best made with intent — meeting new networks of people (and the nodes or their subgroups of people), to work nearby or remotely and get in the habit of being within an organization — to be entrepreneurial — learning how it all works, and how to use the tools that may or may not still be in place by the time they graduate.
Learning how to learn sounds boring
Yes it does. But what IS learning? It is constant. Is it experiential, where we try new things? Is it the apprenticeship model? Having a mentor? Is it figuring out where to go when you need to learn in the moment of need? Yes the smart phone is one place, but then you are quite the curator. You need Critical Thinking. Generative AI can be a stealth partner of course, but that definitely requires Critical Thinking and Context.
I understand skill based learning is always required, though it is important that people recognize they will be on a learning carousel and they most likely will not be getting off throughout their working lives.
Ongoing. Lifelong learning, continuous learning — has never been so relevant.
A core adult learning principal is that we tether our existing knowledge and experience to each new concept.
Scaffolding, we call it- both within a class and within our portfolio of careers.
And so to that, I say that many of the learning theories we know and love today were developed when you learned and you landed and you did what you learned.
Now, we need to be ready to land and stick around for a bit and learn for the next thing. It could be within the same organization, but don’t get too settled doing one thing. People will take parts of what they know and apply it to the next thing they need to learn,
I am not a believer in most pathways to learning. Pathways are ok if there is an experience right after an initial learning experience and it can be put to use right away — impact is demonstrated and less likely to be forgotten.
They will do that until they need to learn the next skill, or get the next role — the next learning experience, skill, job requirement,
Learn to learn. Dig in and see how you learn best. College? Certificates online? Apprenticeships? Mentorships? See what you like and learn from best. We’re all going to need it.
