Think Piece: The Only Competency That Will Matter Is Continuous Learning

“In a chaotic world, the only competency that matters is continuous learning.”

To improve and extend your career, you need to ponder what the near future holds. While predicting the distant future is tough, looking out a few short years using recent history as your foundation isn’t nearly as difficult. The last two decades have been marked by the radical adoption of technology in nearly every aspect of conducting business. The adoption of technology has eliminated once formidable barriers to entry, brought unrivaled transparency to reality, and accelerated productivity (particularly in the areas of product development and distribution). Given all of the change you 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?

I argue NOT!

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. Those characteristics are:

Continuous churn — frequent cycles of both rapid economic growth and contraction that forced organizations to acquire and shed both talent and entire businesses. Many global organizations were forced to deal with both rapid growth and contraction simultaneously, i.e. churn.
Intense global competition — as barriers to entry and competition fell, every firm, even those servicing once tightly defined regional markets, was thrust into a state of unrelenting and intense global competition. 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.
Rapid obsolescence — with product lifecycles getting shorter and new ways to deliver goods and services arriving daily, information, tools, practices, products, and skills are becoming obsolete at an insane pace. In some industries the knowledge required to produce a product is obsolete by the time the product hits the market. This characteristic impacts not only individuals and organizations, but also entire industries (print publication, photographic technology, communications infrastructure, etc.)
Unpredictability foils planning — all of the above characteristics combine to create the fourth: the complexity that volatility in the business environment brings to planning. For industries that make long-term investments (airlines, heavy manufacturing, materials mining, etc.) long-term planning has become largely ineffectual.

The two words that 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; that is, until now!

The era of long-lasting competencies is gone, and I am predicting 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 HR that in a world of constant obsolescence, knowledge, skills, tools, and practices have an extremely limited shelf life. 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 firms like Google, Nike, Netflix, and Apple have championed since inception.

The key characteristics of the continuous learning competency include:

Endless learning — unlike traditional training and development, there is no endpoint for individuals or organizations that exhibit this competency.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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

Stop reading for a second and ask yourself: “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 you answered yes to any of those phrases, is it really likely that you can lead or dominate your industry without addressing those issues?

Accepting obsolescence of knowledge and experience is hard, but if you are going to be successful in a world of chaos, innovation, and constant obsolescence, you need 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 you desire to be successful and enjoy job security, you need to become a “learning machine.” If you want to make your organization successful in a chaotic world, declare “continuous learning” to be your organization’s No. 1 core competency.

No Excuses

A while back I was attending a formal meeting at Google. Demonstrating my total attention (in stark contrast to the Googlers in attendance) I left all of my technology packed away. Immediately following the meeting I was asked to discuss the ramifications of a major industry event that had occurred during the meeting. I excused my lack of knowledge and awareness of the event using my dedicated attention to the meeting with executives. Much to my dismay, the employee responded with a scowl, dismissing my excuse, and proceeded to walk away mumbling to himself and shaking his head in disbelief. I learned that day that the cost of not knowing “everything immediately” at Google is extremely high. Don’t let my excuse be yours. Learning cannot stop because you are otherwise engaged!