The Only Competency That Will Matter Is Continuous Learning

The Only Competency That Will Matter Is Continuous Learning

“In a chaotic world, the only competency that matters is continuous learning.”
Some stalwarts of TQM have proclaimed that organization with great team members may be successful in shorter span, but in long term one needs to understand whether the team can learn new things and unlearn old things.
To improve and extend organizational vision, one needs to ponder what the near as well as long future holds. While predicting the distant future is tough, looking out a few short years using recent history as foundation isn’t very difficult. The last two decades have been marked by the radical adoption of technology and adaption in nearly every aspect of business. The adoption of technology has eliminated once formidable barriers to entry, brought unrivaled transparency to reality and accelerated productivity. Given all of the changes we have witnessed in the last 20 years, does it really make sense that the same competencies organizations sought out three decades ago will be those most of value moving forward?
Characterizing the Last 20 Years
While the adoption of technology has certainly been a major driver of change, there are ultimately four characteristics that define the business environment of the last two decades.
1. Continuous churning
Frequent cycles of both rapid economic growth and contraction forced organizations to acquire and shed both talent and businesses as required. Many global organizations were forced to deal with both rapid growth and contraction simultaneously. Those who could not cope with such changes were perished. It works on the principle of ‘Survival of the fittest and not the strongest’.
2. Intense global competition
As barriers to entry in any geographical location and compete there is becoming very easy. Every firm, even those servicing defined regional markets, was thrust into a state of unrelenting and intense global competition from global players. In a race for differentiation, technology was leveraged to accelerate product development and innovative delivery, kicking off a never-ending battle that has shortened product development lifecycles and forced innovation throughout all business functions.
3. Rapid obsolescence
Product lifecycles are getting shorter and new ways to deliver goods and services are introduced daily. Existing information, tools, practices, products and skills are becoming obsolete at an insane pace. This characteristic impacts not only individuals and organizations, but also entire industries.
4. Unpredictability foils planning
For industries that make long-term investments long-term planning has become largely ineffectual.
We can best describe our current state: continuous obsolescence. Years ago, management guru Tom Peters predicted our current state. He called it “managing under chaos.”
Established Competencies No Longer Apply
Evolution and change are not new, but the rate at which the business environment is changing is unprecedented. During most of the last century, economic cycles, product lifecycles and the knowledge, skills, tools and approaches used to produce products lasted longer. Not only did change occur slower, it occurred in predictable patterns. This stability and consistency enabled organizations to create organizational models that governed how work was broken up into tasks, who would accomplish those tasks, what tools would be used and to predict how long work would take. A few years into the industrial era, the concept of competencies emerged and organizations started hiring to a target competency profile that has hasn’t changed much in 60 years.
The era of long-lasting competencies is gone now and it is predicted that it will never return. Chaos and rapid change are the new norm and will be for decades to come. In the chaotic environment that is today, one thing is clear: the approaches developed for organizing labor and accomplishing work in the industrial era have become barriers to productivity today. No longer do organizations need indefinite access to narrowly skilled talent. Instead, they need medium-term access to versatile talent and short-term access to specialized talent.
The Only Competency that Will Matter: Continuous Learning
It should be clear to everyone in that in a world of constant obsolescence, knowledge, skills, tools and practices have an extremely limited shelf life of knowledge and skills. Instead of relying on past experience, training or education, employees will be required to continually “unlearn” yesterday’s obsolete practices and solutions and to seek out completely new ones using the social trends and technology of the day. In that environment, the only key competency that can effectively counter continuous obsolescence is the ability to continuously learn and apply knowledge.
The continuous learning competency is the foundation behind building a ‘learning organization’, a concept many organizations have championed since inception. The key characteristics of the continuous learning competency include:
1. Endless learning — Unlike traditional training and development, there is no endpoint for individuals or organizations that exhibit this competency.
2. Relative speed — While continuous learners never stop, the speed at which they seek out, absorb and leverage new knowledge is relative to the rate of innovation or speed of change called for by the market.
3. Bleeding-edge — Continuous learners are never playing catch up, but rather are learning from the leading or bleeding edge of knowledge. As such, their trusted sources don’t include more mainstream channels of information dissemination.
4. Self-directed — Remaining on the bleeding edge of knowledge requires direction that cannot come from systems designed to coordinate the masses. As a result, continuous learners are self-motivated and self-directed learners.
5. Immediate application — It is possible to continuously acquire knowledge and never apply it, but continuous learners are never satisfied with theoretical or abstract knowledge. They instead seek out learning that can be directly applied to current and “near future” problems and opportunities.
6. Broad scope — To further enable application of knowledge, continuous learners seek out information on a broad range of skills and capabilities that better enable immediate application of core knowledge. The expanded scope of learning often includes potential problems, leading experts, the best information sources, next practices, metrics and trends.
7. Agile — Continuous learners can quickly recognize and accept that previously attained knowledge is no longer relevant and stop defending past practices and long-held beliefs.
8. Sharing — Both individuals and organizations that master the continuous learning competency develop systems that actually get used to maximize the speed and quality of information that gets shared throughout the organization, eliminating excessive duplication in discovery. These systems also help pinpoint how and where continuous learners are uncovering information of value.
9. Performance criteria — Individuals who are continuous learners assess their own performance based on their ability to remain on the “bleeding edge,” even when others do not. Organizations seeking to develop a learning organization also establish continuous learning behaviors as primary assessment factors in hiring, promotion decisions and performance appraisals.
10. Data-based decision-making — Non-continuous learners are comfortable using historical data and examples out of context, while continuous learners and learning organizations demand time-sensitive information to justify decisions.
Final Thoughts
One may have to ask a question to self “has my organization experienced unpredictable change in recent years, are we growing in some areas but contracting in others and does the way we have always done things seem to be a barrier moving forward?” If answer is yes to any of those phrases, is it really likely that one can lead or dominate industry without addressing those issues?
Accepting obsolescence of knowledge and experience is hard, but if organizations are going to be successful in a world of chaos, innovation and constant obsolescence, one needs to realize that “yesterday’s answers” are not only rapidly losing their value, but reliance upon them may be a liability. If as an individual desire to be successful and enjoy job security, one needs to become a “learning machine.” If one wants to make organization successful in a chaotic world, declare “continuous learning” to be organization’s No. 1 core competency.