VUCA defined

But what exactly does the acronym mean?

• Volatile: The “V” in VUCA denotes the speed, volume, and magnitude of change that is beyond a predictable process or design. Think of volatility as turbulence.
• Uncertain: The “U” in VUCA represents the lack of predictability in what is happening around us. This makes it difficult for anyone to use the past to predict future outcomes. Forecasting is difficult, causing challenges to decision making.
• Complex: The “C” in VUCA stands for the intricacy and complicated factors involved in an issue or planning for the future. Many more dynamics are networked to add to the confusion, making it extremely difficult to know what to do.
• Ambiguous: The “A,” ambiguity, defines the lack of clarity about the meaning or the causes behind an event, making the “why” hard to ascertain. What really caused a success or a failure? We can’t always be certain.

I highly, highly recommend that you read Bob Johansen’s book Leaders Make the Future (2nd Edition, BK Business, 2012) to learn more about the VUCA environment and Bob’s antidote about what we can do.

What does this have to do with me?

Your leaders are operating in a VUCA world. If your organization is struggling, it is at least partially due to VUCA and the speed of change. The new VUCA environment is demanding and challenging for even the best organizations. And all organizations must deal with it. According to Jack Welch, “If the rate of change on the outside exceeds the rate of change on the inside, the end is near.”

Recent studies by the Boston Consulting Group, the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL), and others conclude that organizations today must become more adaptive, learning better, faster, and more economically than their competition. Few organizations are “adapting” fast enough or in the right ways to be competitive. Who is adapting? Apple, Google, 3M, Target, and Amazon are often listed as adaptive firms.

What does this have to do with you? As talent development professionals, we must help to position our organizations to be more successful. We must help them learn and develop better, faster, and more economically than the competition. Although your efforts may not be defined in exactly these words, CCL suggests that your over-arching strategy will likely be to:

• Refocus development efforts to hone these more strategic, complex critical-thinking skills.
• Reframe development activities to accommodate the faster-paced VUCA world.
• Focus less on behavioral competencies and more on complex thinking abilities and mindsets.
• Emphasize learning agility, self-awareness, comfort with ambiguity, and critical and strategic thinking.

Doing more with less

The cry to “do more with less” is nothing new. As trainers, we are tuned into the challenges our organizations face. We understand this business reality, whether it is “new” or a repeated reality of years past. This battle cry is heard in every organization. We need to accept it as a permanent business reality.

Finding ways to continue to provide services to your organizations’ growing list of requirements may seem daunting at times. What can you do? Begin by ensuring excellent communication with your organization’s leadership. What are their priorities? Where will you obtain the best return on investment? What else can you do? These suggestions are a start:

• Embrace new roles: The next section in this chapter talks about the expanded roles indicating that your job is changing. When done well, each of those roles is a good investment because they ultimately save your organization time and money.
• Prioritize T&D tasks: You may need to focus on doing fewer things. Trainers may not be able to say, “How do I get these 12 programs delivered?” but instead, “Which of these 12 programs will get delivered?” or “What can we stop doing?” Your job becomes doing the right things with less.
• Use technology wisely: Technology options are covered throughout this book. Know what’s available and how to use it. If travel budgets are reduced, or time away from your organization isn’t as liberal as it once was, think about all the tools you have that weren’t available just a few short years ago. Review your most implemented training program. How could you use technology to save resources? Could you:
  • Use Skype or Google Hangouts to reach employees in other cities or countries?
  • Send small nuggets of information, just in time to employees via their mobile devices?
  • Design several short virtual classroom modules to provide the same learning as a physical session?
  • Invite your CEO or a panel of senior leaders to conduct a discussion online in lieu of conducting a training session?
  • Record presentations for future use?
  • Create peer coaching groups or virtual buddies to continue the learning after a shortened class?
  • Deliver job aids using social media tools?
  • Create an online book club?

The ideas are endless. Your resources are not. Tap into technology.

Brain-based learning

Recent evidence in how the brain works confirms what many of us have known for years. Assisting learners to learn faster and retain knowledge longer is one way we help our organizations deal with the VUCA world. As I note in Chapter 2, insights into how the brain learns can help us be better trainers. Your brain doesn’t just receive information — it processes it. The brain sorts out all incoming information and tries to make connections. The brain starts learning because it has a question about where new information fits. If adults are invited to ask questions about new information, their brains can do a better job of connecting with information they’ve already stored. That’s because the act of learning begins with a question. If the brain isn’t curious about incoming information, it takes the path of least resistance and focuses on something else.

David Rock is the director of the NeuroLeadership Institute and author of Your Brain at Work (HarperBusiness, 2009). He uses an AGES model that identifies four requirements to embed ideas:

• Attention must be very high; multitasking dramatically reduces recall. The chemical processes to encode memory are activated when we are very focused.
• Generating a mental map of the new ideas requires participant involvement.
• Emotions need to be high; we only remember things we feel strongly about.
• Spacing learning out into smaller chunks is important.

A high AGES score is required for participants to recall ideas. Attention, generation, emotion, and spacing form the AGES model. Practicing in the form of small group work, gamification, contests, or team teaching can all increase a learning event’s AGES score and help to ensure that we provide support to help our organizations’ employees learn better and faster.

John Medina, author of Brain Rules (Pear Press, 2014), presents 12 entertaining and valuable tools to help you understand how the brain works so you can become a more effective trainer.

Microbursts, capsules, and mini trends

One of the outcomes of the brain-based research is the value in presenting content in smaller chunks — even pill size. In addition, as trainers we are often challenged to present “must know” and not “nice to know” content. Focusing on only “must know” has never been more critical than today. Our learners are swamped by a sea of information every day — or as some call it, data smog. We have an obligation to avoid adding to the data smog by identifying only the microbursts of information that are critical for our learners to know and timed close to the time they need to know them. Align these decisions to your corporate strategy.

Technology to the rescue. Mobile learning, social media, job aids — electronic or not, videos, mentoring, coaching, QR codes, podcasts, learnlets, and other options support your delivery of just-in-time capsules of information: what they need, when they need it, and where they need it.

Clark Quinn, author and consultant, writes extensively on topics such as mobile learning, performance support tools, and web-based learning.

It will be up to you to determine the least amount of information your learners need to know and to deliver it in bite-sized, right-sized portions.

Training on the run

What about those times when you are expected to design an interactive training session on short notice? Or when management asks you to condense your session down from a day to two hours? Impossible, you say? You may feel that way, but as the trends clearly show, efficiency and productivity take precedence now. Because this is more the norm than the exception, these suggestions will help you next time it occurs:

• Conduct a needs assessment that ensures you are training the most important knowledge and skills, and only the most important knowledge and skills: Ask a few learners and a couple of supervisors for their thoughts. Then prepare your capsules and microbursts of content.
• Make use of job aids that can be used during the training session and easily referenced after the session.
• Use a practical yet simple-to-remember process to teach whatever you need to. Three steps should be the maximum.
• A shortened time frame does not mean that you turn everything into a lecture. If anything, it is even more critical that participants are involved and experience the skills they must learn. Use a blended learning approach. Direct learners to read content before the session. Spend your time together on role plays or practice activities.
• Identify how you will follow up with participants. Email the next day with reminders of key concepts. Another email or tweet a week later jogs memories.
• You may not have much time left for an evaluation, so ask one or two key questions, such as, “What is the most useful concept you learned in this session?” or “What is one thing you wished you had learned but didn’t?”

Next time you are asked to do the impossible, just smile and start running!

Globalization

Our organizations become more globalized every day, whether we merge with a company from another country, tap into the workforce on another continent, or collaborate with a foreign organization. Helping our organizations make the adjustment is important. Globalization offers companies exciting growth opportunities; it also introduces a complex array of challenges.

The challenges, often focused on a lack of the right infrastructure, affect the entire organization. Managing global organizations isn’t a new challenge, but the accelerating shift of economic activity from Europe and North America to Africa, Asia, and Latin America creates new challenges. Global organizations struggle to adapt to the tension in managing strategy, people, costs, and risk on a global scale. The benefits far outweigh the challenges with the ability to access new customer markets, new suppliers, and new partners.

So how does this create a requirement for trainers? Think about it. The broad supply of skills, knowledge, and experience available within the global workforce represent invaluable assets to your company; however, utilizing these assets effectively is difficult. For example, if your company is like most, it has a vast amount of corporate knowledge gained in various ways. Unfortunately, few companies are good at transferring lessons learned from one emerging market to another. Trainers have the tools to gather, compile, and redistribute lessons learned.

As a trainer, learn about the other culture. If conducting training, learn to pronounce names. Respect personal preferences. If participants have written Ms. or Dr. on their table tents, there is a strong preference to be addressed in the more formal context. Recognize that a highly participative learning approach may be uncomfortable for some cultures. For example, some cultures do not view direct eye contact as positively as those who live in the United States.

Diverse cultures require additional effort. A diverse audience requires that trainers speak clearly, are careful about giving feedback, frequently check for understanding, give instructions in the same sequence they are to be followed, avoid single country references, take care with jokes or other potentially offensive remarks, and repeat information when necessary.

Unique differences occur in any language. For example, using the colloquialism of “Are you pulling a fast one?” does not make much sense to someone just learning the language. Say instead, “Are you trying to trick me?” Similarly, sarcasm may be misunderstood or seem too aggressive. “Sure it is!” stated sarcastically will be better understood if you say “I don’t think that is correct.”

Read a book that identifies common gestures and their meanings in other cultures. For example, a thumbs-up signal that to you indicates everything is okay is a rude gesture in Nigeria and Australia. Or check out LuAnn Irwin and Renie McClay’s Essential Guide to Training Global Audiences (Pfeiffer, 2008).

Cultural differences make it difficult to tap into talent around the world. Managing workforces that are separated by thousands of miles, international time zones, and diverse cultures can be a challenge. Your organization must be able to create an infrastructure that maintains the diversity of international teams while also empowering local employees. From a positive perspective, technology has made possible new forms of international coordination within global companies and potential new ways for them to flourish in these markets. Trainers who have experience or expertise in organizational development can be supportive in the VUCA challenge.

The multi-generational workforce

Four generations currently exist in the American workforce: Traditionalists, Baby Boomers, Generation X, and Millennials. What do you need to know about the mix that ensures the best results? As a trainer, you have two issues to address. The first is to ensure the entire workforce appreciates the diversity each group brings. The second is to ensure that the Millennials are developed and ready to take on leadership responsibilities at a much earlier age than was typical in the past.

Supporting the C-Suite

Your organization will need your support in this VUCA world, so it’s natural to assume that you will be in direct contact with your senior leaders. The greatest skill you will most likely need to develop is the ability to talk C-suitese: to articulate how your achievements impact the organization, state how you’ve affected profitability, and to express your vision for the future. What does it take to communicate with the C-suite?

Take it from Dianna Booher, author of “Securing Executive Support: Presenting to the C-Suite” in ASTD Handbook: The Definitive Reference for T&D (ASTD, 2014): “The first thing you need to do is to understand how members of the C-suite think. Plan your message in advance. Make it concise and to the point. Executives are an impatient lot. They want to know the message first and are happy to fill in with the details later.”

Make your message strategic. Strategic ideas get approved and funded. Support the strategy with just enough detail to demonstrate that your plan is sound. Ask provocative questions. Your message should not just “tell” but should also invite thinking from your audience. Booher states that stimulating questions generate more support. What questions can you ask to pique interest from your audience? And can you weave them into a story?

The next time you are invited to the C-suite to present plans for the following year or to justify why a blended learning approach would be better, use Diana’s checklist as a reminder of the strategies for success:

• Open with the big-picture message statement.
• Select critical information nuggets for a concise message.
• Deliver a strategic message supported by details that sell the idea.
• Define several provocative questions.
• Take a stand on the issue.
• Create a memorable story.

To summarize this section, you may see these environmental changes as a need to provide better, faster, and cheaper training. And you are right! Each lends itself to your need to produce better training, in a shorter time frame, and at a more reasonable cost than in the past.

Onboarding

How your organization welcomes new employees creates the important “first impression.” This is the time to ensure that your company puts its best foot forward. Long-term employee engagement is based on the right fit, starting with your onboarding process. Is it any wonder why this role now falls to you? You understand what it takes to draw people in, to create involvement, to engage employees, and to provide an active learning experience:

• Ensure that new employees receive the information they need to help them integrate into the workforce.
• Ensure that new employees know how their role fits in the organization.
• Build new employees’ self-esteem by recognizing the value they bring.
• Introduce new employees to other employees, including management and their department co-workers.
• Ensure that new employees feel welcome and part of the team, and that they leave knowing they made the right decision.

Onboarding is not an event; it is a process. It isn’t over after the original event. Assign a “buddy” or “coach” to help new employees find answers and feel welcome. This important new role uses your skills to lead to a higher level of employee engagement right from the start.

Facilitating change

Because organizations are going through massive change, expect to be drawn into the process. You have the kind of skills required for success: knowing about effective communication, understanding motivation, respecting the value of teams, formulating goals and objectives, designing plans, defining performance standards, implementing plans, and dozens of other skills. You also know how important active, involved participation is to the success of any project and how to obtain that involvement. You may even have designed and facilitated change-management training for your organization. This is why your role is critical to helping lead change in your organization.

Ensure that your organization is using a process to guide the change. The key to successfully managing change is strong, effective communication. As your organization moves through a change management effort, you will find many of your skills are critical to its success.

Coaching managers

Have you ever had managers tell you it was your job to develop their people? They are only half right. Developing people, closing the skill gaps in the workforce, and increasing knowledge must be a partnership between you and managers. Managers may not have thought about it this way in the past — you will most likely need to develop and coach them along the way. You will need to clarify their role as a developmental manager and show them how to embed development into the work the employees are doing. You will be “coaching the coaches.”

You will help managers be better coaches to support learning and development. But your coaching job doesn’t end there. You may also be asked to coach managers to make better decisions, improve their communication skills, design succession plans, and all the other things that define excellent managers or leaders.

Based on ATD’s The Coaching Approach: A Key Tool for Successful Managers study, coaching is a process that includes three main activities:

• Proactive listening
• Asking non-directive and prompting questions
• Providing targeted, timely, and actionable feedback

As a T&D professional, you know how to do all of those things. Piece of cake! Now you know why this is one of your new roles.

Creating mentoring opportunities

A mentor is a trusted counselor or guide. There are at least two people in a mentoring relationship, and both can gain valuable new knowledge, insight, and skills as a result of participating. Mentoring is not limited to those in a formal program. In our highly connected world of social networking, new mentoring relationships are emerging as a result of savvy employees (and their employers) making connections and joining groups that give them access to potential mentoring matches. Eager learners and seasoned veterans who are willing to be mentors can easily connect and begin a mutually beneficial mentoring relationship. Anyone can start a mentoring relationship.

As a T&D professional, developing employees through mentoring is another role you may be expected to complete. In this role you may:

• Create a process to locate and match mentor/protégé partnerships
• Design readiness surveys for mentors and protégés
• Design and conduct a mentoring training program
• Determine how to create mentoring opportunities for employees around the globe
• Identify ways to use social media tools to facilitate mentoring matches
• Create an evaluation plan to measure the success of the program
• Determine a balanced diversity approach for the program

Once again, you can see how the skills you honed as a T&D professional provide a practical basis for this role.

Internal consulting

Internal consulting is a unique training and development role. Internal consultants are called upon to facilitate high-level meetings, to master mind change efforts, to take a systems approach for future projects, and execute other exciting high-level projects.

Beverly Scott and Kim Barnes see new internal consulting roles emerging, including performance consultant and trusted advisor. They define them in their book Consulting on the Inside: An Internal Consultant’s Guide to Living and Working Inside Organizations (2nd Edition, ASTD, 2011).

What does it take to be a successful internal consultant? First and foremost it requires that you gain the trust and credibility of everyone in the organization: leaders and employees. You must be a generalist, competent in a broad range of applications, but you must also be seen as an expert in several areas to ensure credibility. Again, you’ve been in training for this role!

Building teams

Human beings make up organizations, create the culture, and determine the total effectiveness of their organizations. This effectiveness depends on how well they work together as a group. Indeed, human beings do almost everything in groups. Working as a team is how we get things done, and teams are most effective when they communicate well and function as a cohesive unit. Unfortunately, employees may cognitively “know” the importance of teamwork, but may not practice what they know. We may appreciate good communication, but may not realize how our personal communication may inhibit understanding by our co-workers.

Teams rarely start off great; they learn to be great. And that is what team building can do. You can easily “teach team skills,” but often a team doesn’t request training until it is nearly dysfunctional. At that point, your role changes from facilitating team skills training to facilitating a teambuilding intervention. You may need to work with teams that are less productive and efficient than they should be (sometimes dysfunctional) in order to create a functioning team.

In this role, you will gather information and design an intervention that is customized and unique for every team.

To summarize this section, the effects of the VUCA world require T&D professionals to embrace expanded roles with a broader definition of what trainers do. Working under the banner of Talent Development helps to ensure that you will work hand-in-hand with management to add value to your organization. Change may be huge for some trainers; it is less for others.

Team training

Team training is used in various situations, such as when one is an expert, when content is complex, or when one is a new trainer. It happens in virtual and face-to-face instructor-led training (ILT).

Few things in the training field can be as frustrating and at the same time as enriching as team training. Having the opportunity to train with a colleague is a unique opportunity to grow. Trainers frequently are one-person shows and rarely have the opportunity to work with colleagues and obtain feedback from someone in the same profession. It is also an opportunity to watch another person model new techniques and approaches, tell new stories, and present content from a new perspective.

At the same time, the experience can be very frustrating. The other trainer may take longer on a section, causing you to cut material. The other trainer’s style may be the opposite of yours; for example, you keep the front table neat and orderly, but the other person prefers to spend time with participants and doesn’t bother organizing until the end of the day. The other trainer presents content in a different way, and you wonder if one of you is incorrect.

The bottom line is that the participants must see you working as a team. They should see nothing but two professionals making sure that they are conducting the best darn training they’ve ever attended. The suggestions are appropriate for virtual and face-to-face ILT.

Help for the part-time trainer

The trends in training lead to a need for more trainers. If you’re good at what you do, you may be rewarded with the opportunity to show others how to do what you do so well. What do you do? Select the sections in this book that you think will be most beneficial to you. Then go out there and try it!

As a part-time trainer, one of the biggest problems you may have is managing both your training responsibilities and your “real” job. These tips will help you:

• Accept training projects that are consistent with the objectives of your position.
• When you know you will be training, keep a resource file on that topic handy. Clip articles and save other relevant information in these resource files. When you are ready to prepare, all your resources will be in one spot.
• Keep a list of points you want to make, things you want to do, or stories you want to tell. Keep the list handy so that when you think of things, you can write them down. When you are ready to prepare, all your thoughts will be collected on your list.

Use index cards to collect your ideas and stories. You can easily track each as you present it.

• Keep a training bag ready. Have markers, pens, masking tape, and whatever else you consistently use in training stored in an old briefcase. When it’s time to train, just grab your bag. There’s no need to scurry around for the things you need.
• Keep all your training manuals, handouts, notes, and visuals in one spot. This prevents you from having to assemble everything at the last minute.

Discipline yourself to replenish supplies in your kit immediately upon returning from the current training session; it will always be ready to go.

• If you have just completed a program and you know you’ll be doing it again, write a summary of what went well and what you’d do differently immediately following the program. Make any changes at that time too. If you do this while the material is fresh in your mind, it will save you time.
• Remember that investment pays off. If you spend adequate time preparing for your training the first time you do it, you will benefit every time you train.

Informal learning on the job

Everyone learns on the job. Whether you help yourself, receive assignments from your supervisor, learn from experiences, tap into the Internet, ask a colleague, or join a professional association, every experience that you have — and every experience that you encourage your learners to have — benefits both the individual and the organization.

As a trainer, you can be influential, make suggestions, and help to create an environment that is supportive and conducive to informal learning. These four thought starters provide a few ideas for you:

• Help yourself: Self-directed learning appeals to most of us because we like to learn on our own. The flexibility allows us to learn when and where we want. This supports most of our natural learning desires. From a learning perspective, how can you reward employees who learn on their own?
• Informal learning: The unofficial, impromptu, unscheduled way in which most people learn to do their jobs is responsible for 70 or 80 percent of all learning. How can you create an organizational culture that supports informal learning?
• Learn from experiences: Designing experiential learning activities to fit into classroom activities ensures that learners practice skills. Bringing the real world into the classroom gives learners skills that are required to solve today’s problems. Can you also find ways to take the entire learning group to the site? How can you encourage individual learners and their supervisors to learn from experience?
• On-the-job assignments: Supervisors have many tools at their disposal: rotational assignments, stretch assignments, project-based assignments, and others. Supervisors decide which developmental assignments will be most beneficial for each employee. As an L&D professional, you may need to help supervisors define this important role. How can you coach supervisors to stay in touch with assignments that encourage their employees’ development?

Content

Remember what you read earlier about the VUCA world: The volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity inherent in today’s business world is the “new normal,” and it is profoundly changing how organizations do business.

The skills and abilities leaders once needed to help their organizations thrive are no longer sufficient. Today, more strategic, complex, critical-thinking skills are required. All of us can help our organizations succeed in today’s VUCA environment. We can do our part to develop a workforce that counters volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity.

Applying the VUCA model as a framework to re-tool employee development models may enable companies to identify and foster the skills organizations need now and in the future.

Pause for a moment and think about it. Even generally, what does it take to work in a VUCA world? Yes, of course the technical and the job-related skills, but what is needed to be successful in a VUCA world? What do your current and future employees need to develop to be successful? What are the “white-space skills” — those skills that are between the job requirements and competencies?

Bob Johansen, author of Leaders Make the Future (BK Business, 2012) shares skills that counter VUCA:

• Volatility requires vision.
• Uncertainty requires more understanding.
• Complexity requires more clarity.
• Ambiguity requires agility.

So imagine that your CEO comes to you and says, “Our employees need more vision, understanding, clarity, and agility.” What are you going to say?

I’ve identified half a dozen skills in each area that I think provide some meaningful topics reducible to KSAs (knowledge, skills, and attitudes), which should be helpful. They certainly aren’t all-inclusive, and there is some crossover among them.

• Volatility requires vision, so what skills do your employees require? How about: strategic thinking, problem solving, integrity and ethics, predictive analysis, scenario planning, and self-awareness.
• Uncertainty requires more understanding, so what skills do your employees require? How about resilience, managing change, empathy and acceptance, optimism and stress management, discernment, network thinking, and learning to learn.
• Complexity requires more clarity, so what skills do your employees require? How about critical thinking, teamwork (virtually too), setting priorities, mentoring, coaching, developing talent, managerial skills, communication, and boundary spanning.
• Ambiguity requires agility, so what skills do your employees require? How about change management (again), accountability and action orientation, fostering innovation and creativity, using technology to be more nimble, time management, and collaboration.

And all of these require complete, concise, and timely communication, and relationship building. That might be a list of “content” we need to deliver—whether formally in a classroom, asynchronously online, in a book, informally through discussions, using our social networks, through coaches or mentors, on apps, in a MOOC, on a webcast, in a brownbag presentation, through a college course… . the venue or means does not matter.

Future roles

Now, how about you? How do you prepare yourself? Think about your own development and what you need to do to stay ahead. Overall, keep in mind the Thiagi BCF principle — better cheaper faster. This is your mantra within the VUCA world. And what will you be doing better, cheaper, and faster?

Here are a dozen roles our profession may see — even within the year. Some are tongue-in-cheek titles, but every role will be necessary soon and describes talent that you should pay attention to. So sit back, relax, and select a new job for yourself!

• Talent Systems Optimizer: As organizations continue to fold the development function and the HR function under one combined Chief Talent Officer (CTO) hat, all of us need to think “system.” From a generalist perspective, you need to learn enough about HR processes so that you can help drive new practices into every part of the organization. Your processes no longer stand alone — they fit together in an integrated Talent System. Remember that your CTO will be expected to lead these efforts and will call on you to support him or her. You’ll need to know how to ensure employee engagement — to capture employees’ hearts and minds to keep the best people who can create, innovate, and move the organization forward.
• Innovation Implementer: All companies need to become more innovative. If the C-suite needs to be more innovative, it will require support to implement, inform, deliver skills, share knowledge, and influence attitudes. The learning department is connected to all parts of the organization, and we have better than average communication skills. Our profession encourages creative thinkers more than most professions. Someone else may create the idea, but implementing will be in our hands.
• Corporate Coach: You may already be a corporate coach, or you may call yourself an internal consultant. Whatever your title, your skills will be necessary. As mentioned earlier in this chapter, there is a new emphasis on coaching managers to develop their people as well as do a better job as managers and leaders.
• Corporate Content Curator: Content abounds — that’s not news, but someone needs to have an eye toward the future to determine what employees “must have” and what is “nice to have.” Trainers have faced this question for decades, so that part isn’t new. Information is arriving so rapidly and in such large doses that someone in the decision arena must act as the go-between for the C-Suite and the workforce to make these decisions. Once the decision about what content needs to be distributed, a plan must be in place for how the content is distributed.
• Engagement Planner: Much like a wedding planner, you will need to be adept at skills that build an engaged and wise workforce. As you are pulled more into talent-management efforts, you will need to ensure everyone understands that training is not the answer for everything. The engagement planner role requires skills such as communication, creativity, attention to detail, organization, and resourcefulness.
• The Opportunity Optimist: F. Scott Fitzgerald said, “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.” In the future, to some extent, all of us will be required to view all the uncertain and changing issues that come toward our companies and departments, discern meaning, and plan for a future that others may not be able to understand. Selecting and developing a workforce to be prepared for the future requires the ability to see a problem and implement steps to turn it into an opportunity.
• Data Analytics Team: As your organization relies more on analytics, it will also require various roles such as these:
  • Data Hygienist to ensure that data coming into the system is accurate and sanitary.
  • Data Miner to sift through masses of data to discover what your organization requires.
  • Statistical Architect to create a taxonomy and organize the data so that it’s ready to analyze.
  • Data Engineer to create sophisticated algorithms and models that can predict customer behavior, pricing strategy, and profitable markets.
  • Marketing Maharishi to turn the data models and predictions into bottom line results.
• MOOC (Massive Open Online Courses) Master: Most of the courses currently offered are academic, but more business programs are becoming available daily. Yep, there are lots of problems with partnerships, platforms, cost, and dropout rates. And most organizations are still skeptical about the value of free online courses. Still, the MOOC providers are developing validated certifications. The MOOC Master will need to decide how to use these courses efficiently and effectively.

Yes, these are imaginary roles today, but even without knowing what real roles will exist in the future, you can continue to work on your own development. Share your needs and hopes for continued development. Broaden your skills and knowledge. Learn to be flexible and to watch for opportunities to learn new skills. Learn everything you can about your industry. Set goals and build development plans for your future.

Become a lifelong learner

Finally, stay ahead of the change. To the roles above, add Lifelong Learner Extraordinaire: The profession has used the term lifelong learning since the 1990s, but you will be expected to model this to extreme. You will have lots to learn to keep up with your own VUCA world. You will need to be able to immerse yourself in a topic, technique, process, data, whatever, and come up for air with insight for the organization and what it will take to bring the workforce along to accomplish the strategy. Be sure to take the time to keep your skills and knowledge on the cutting edge. Dedicate yourself to lifelong professional development.

Becoming a lifelong learner isn’t new to our profession — in fact, we invented the idea. Have you ever thought about all the skills you need to be proficient? I sometimes get exhausted just thinking about everything I need to do my job. This is what makes the job so exciting, but it is also what necessitates becoming lifelong learners.