Co.Create | creativity + culture + commerce: At times, I hear secrets. Recently I met a prominent business leader, a person who manages multi-million dollar global client relationships at an established company. He admitted that he "walks into work naked every single day." In other words, his skills have not evolved to meet the digital-specific demands of his job. It’s likely that his supervisor and colleagues are unaware of the extent of his skill deficiency. His lack of digital expertise, coupled with an inability to admit what he doesn’t know, costs the company hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost opportunities annually.
4 comments:
I think a pervasive belief many companies hold is that by updating the training giving to new hires, a company can stay up-to-date without updating its entire employee base. What results is a lopsided distribution of understanding, resources, and efficiency. When this is combined with the natural disinclination of people to admit that the don't actually know a skill, the effect can be crippling. It is easy enough to learn a language, and to appear that you know more than you do. And while I can easily make a case for learning-on-the-job, in many instances this is simply untenable.
I think several changes need to take place in the business industry. The stigma associated with not knowing a particular skill is so great that it often never gets addressed. In that same vein, business should emphasize the importance of willingness to learn when bringing on new hires. A solid foundational skill set is vital, but I think at the end of the day, someone who has fewer skills than other applicants, but is willing to commit to a learning process is infinitely more valuable.
I agree with the author about the problem presented in this article. More often then not, there is a deficiency in digital skills when working in larger companies, and it is not acknowledged even when it becomes glaringly obvious. I do wish the article would have given more concrete example of companies that are successfully bridging that gap in knowledge, but the tips given are valid in a general sense. I found lessons three and four to be especially helpful. Actually applying lessons is so important to making them stick. Right now I am taking several paperwork heavy classes and as a result of having a production assignment, have been immediately implementing the techniques I am learning. I have found this infinitely beneficial in imprinting the skills in my memory. Lesson four is helpful because while learning from your more able peers is helpful, they might also have some learning to do, having an expert teach you, gives you a better chance of having all your questions answered and multiple levels of skills being catered to.
Yup, yeah. This article pretty much reaffirms some philosophical computer beliefs I already had. The average employee will re-skill and completely retrain 3-4 times over the course of their entire working life. Applying that notion to digital proficiency, and even new and upcoming industry specific skills, means that the need for constant employee training and multi-skilling is essential for any company to maintain their human capital as a competitive advantage in the marketplace. All things being equal, the company that invests in constantly training its employees in the latest technology and skills will outrank the company that does not. Corporations have to constantly be on the lookout for how new tools can enhance their bottom line, and digital education and training is absolutely no different. I am currently taking a class on organizational behavior and how to optimize human capital as a competitive advantage. We had two lectures solely on the positive impact of constant and good employee training. Maintaining a company full of industry leading employees takes more than simply finding new good recruits.
I agree wholly with the author of this article; the focused put on hiring new talent as compared to building on the preexisting employees leads to a gap in the education and efficiency of a company’s work force. This relates directly back to a previous article that questioned whether companies should hire “old” people, due to their little training in the digital field. The answer to both questions is, as the author stated, simple and indicative of a wise CEO. Take the time to focus on the staff at hand before outsourcing and hiring to fill in holes in employee talent. Providing an employee with the tools to increase his or her knowledge will in the long run be more beneficial to a company than hiring a completely new sector that has to be fully trained in an already well running yet outdated department. At any rate, focusing on the talent of current employees will allow them to later train the new generation of workers, eliminating that gap and further eliminating the need for outsourcing and over hiring in the future.
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