L&D professionals need to rethink their skills to fully support organisations’ future learning requirements, writes Barry Johnson
Predicting the future can be fraught with difficulty, but one thing is certain: all industrial sectors face continued change as we enter the ‘fourth’ industrial revolution – the hyper-convergence of technology, talent and data. Recent academic predictions have encompassed everything from artificial intelligence’s invasion of boardrooms, to the further digitisation of administrative jobs and office staff numbers decreasing by as much as 45 per cent.
We no longer consider ourselves equipped for work if we don’t have a mobile phone and laptop computer. These devices alone have changed the operations of some business functions. The company I work for could not operate without modern communications technology and the ensuing management shift. Our board members now have technological, neuroscience and psychological skills. But many big organisations that think they are ‘modern’ are still using top-down command and control management.
This revolution will need you, Mr or Ms Future Learning Leader, to manage the learning in your organisation to bring it through the changes. Skills both old and new will be required to enable people to take advantage of the economic and societal change this transformation is bringing. Perhaps you are the person needed to lead the learning in this technological and organisational revolution.
Learning communities need learning leadership. The brain is still the same; human learning has not changed. What has changed is understanding the mysteries of its operation, which is down, in part, to neuroscience. Undoubtedly the next generation of learning leaders will have neuroscience findings as their operational tool.
Am I making intangible assertions? A 2014 CBRE report suggests that half of our current occupations won’t exist by 2025. No matter what the future holds, the talents needed to succeed could soon be very different from those required today. The organisation of learning in industry is crucial and will differ by sector.
The Management 2020 report from the Commission on the Future of Management and Leadership and the Chartered Management Institute, published in July 2014, reveals startling problems with management and leadership in the UK. It estimates that the cost of poor management is more than £19.3bn per year; UK productivity is 21 per cent lower than the G7 average; 43 per cent of UK line managers rate their managers as ineffective; only 34 per cent of employers provide management training; and risk-taking and innovation is appropriately encouraged in only 38 per cent of the UK companies. This indicates there is a significant opportunity to address current organisational practices.
So, where are you now? Have you move forward into the future? What key things have you learned? Remember, people are the doorway to profits – and learning is the key.
Barry Johnson is non-executive director at Learning Partners