Strategic Human Capital Insights

The Upskilling Experience: 5 Milestones on the Upskill Treadmill

 

What is Upskilling? 

Organizations face continuous change as the 'new normal'.’ To meet these changing business demands, every person in the organization must critically look at their current knowledge levels and skill sets and measure them against the current and anticipated required task benchmarks. The frustration for an individual and an organization is that as soon as you get the required knowledge and skill sets, it is very likely that the benchmark will shift once again. It is often reflected in the statements, "I'm dancing as fast as I can," or the famous treadmill analogy," I'm running faster and faster just to stay in place."

5 Milestones on the Upskilling Journey:

  1. Identify the changes in your operating business paradigm. Recognize that you need to upskill to continue to participate meaningfully and stay relevant.
  2. Understand the business needs and business consequences of not upskilling.
  3. Objectively and honestly determine your current knowledge and skill levels.
  4. Develop a Learning & Development plan to get the necessary expertise.
  5. Acknowledge feelings of knowledge inadequacy and emotional angst.


Leadership & Individual Implications
 

Leadership 'Musts' in the Upskilling Process:

  • Leaders must plan for individual upskilling, or the organization will suffer in organizational agility, resiliency, and effectiveness.
  • Leaders must monitor and measure the upskilling process and outcomes.
  • Leaders must recognize continual upskilling as a new leadership skill set. Leaders, too, must upskill continuously.

Individual β€˜Musts’ in the Upskilling Process:

  • Individuals must choose to upskill or not. Ultimately the decision comes from you, not leadership.
  • Individuals must accept the consequences of not upskilling.
  • Individuals must do it and stop complaining about it. If we accept change as the 'new normal,' evolving ourselves must be automatic. The following statement or mental mindset is no long acceptable: "I accept change, as long as it doesn't affect me."

Is Anyone Exempt from the Upskill Treadmill?

If we accept continuous change is the new normal, the answer must be NO! Sadly, if we take a break and get off the treadmill, we can experience the dreaded 'upskilling deficit.' What does that mean? 


A Personal Experience:  Avoiding the Upskiling Deficit

I have recently launched a new business, my second one in 30 years. Over that timeframe, I have had the opportunity to deliver my consulting services from a branded business franchise with a well-known value proposition. With the launch of my new business, I had to brand my new company and get known in the marketplace. I had to develop a new marketing strategy requiring new skill sets. 

Thirty years ago, my marketing tools were an IBM Selectric typewriter, a fax machine, and a computer with a desktop publishing function.   The internet was yet to be very commercial. Proposals were either sent by mail or faxed. There was no website.

Today, marketing uses the internet in ways unimaginable 30 years ago. Here are some of my new tools. Now I must have a website that must stay current – revised every year. Google determines my internet marketing score based on blogs, landing pages, SEO, and visits, to name a few things. My score determines where on the page I am ranked, which impacts my visibility and gets me found.  It's all about good content. The result: I can now keep a resource library for all my blogs, whitepapers, e-books, and social media posts. Inbound marketing, and its new tools now rule my marketing life.

Nothing in the new reality remotely looks like my business reality from 30 years ago. If I am going to seriously participate in this new business reality, I MUST upskill my current marketing knowledge base and skill set. (And there won't be a typewriter or fax machine in sight!)

So, this week I went off to the yearly inbound marketing convention – learning about new products and functionality and the challenges of incorporating the recent changes to the strategic marketing platform that is now a required tool. I must understand all this to do business in the current new business reality. (And I have barely upskilled from last year's convention!)  A reality check – upskilling never ends! 

 

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Topics: Leadership, Organizational Alignment & Effectiveness

Posted by Joanne Flynn

Joanne Flynn

Joanne T. Flynn heads up the human capital advisory group, Phoenix Strategic Performance, Inc. Previously, she was a Managing Director with Phoenix Group International and was Vice President / Director of Global Learning and Development at Goldman, Sachs for nine years. Joanne works with organizations as they face global growth and competitive challenges. She works with her clients to be both externally focused and internally responsive. With her unique background, she aligns competitive strategic efforts with related internal organizational leadership challenges. With the benefit of her career-long focus, Joanne contributes the unique insight of aligning strategy to internal organizational structure and process. She focuses on human capital relative to strategic initiatives, accelerated business growth, value creation, and business development. Joanne holds a Master of Arts degree in Business Management from the University of Oklahoma. In addition, she holds a double degree major in History and German from St. Elizabeth University, as well as certificates from a variety of leading universities and professional training and development organizations. Joanne has recently published her latest book, Accelerating Business Success, The Human Asset Management Strategy.

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