Have you heard of Design thinking? It’s a process for solving problems by putting in order of importance the consumer’s needs above all else. It depends on noticing and understanding feelings, how people interact with their surrounding conditions, and employs a repetitive, hands-on approach to creating new and interesting solutions.
Design thinking prioritises action over planning, encouraging its followers to look at problems through the eyes of the people affected: trial and error at length; then, planning as the last step.
What skills must one possess in order to excel at work? On hindsight, most people would argue that the solution will always require certain technical and specialized abilities based on knowledge and expertise of a particular industry.
However, “foundational qualities” such as creativity, problem-solving, and empathy are enhanced by design thinking. In an era where Artificial Intelligence (AI) has started to show its future potential, it seems logical to consider the talents that computers find difficult to master when they can outperform humans in routine jobs.
Not just for health care workers, therapists, and other professionals who interact closely with their clients, social skills are crucial for a variety of occupations. Teams with members who can swiftly and efficiently distribute tasks among them are more effective. This ability to work well with others will be even more crucial as the percentage of contractors and independent workers increases in the future.
People need to be able to learn new skills when technology is evolving in unanticipated ways and professions are becoming more hybridized. The method of moving from an inquiry to an excellent idea in a couple of days or weeks would need to be established by each employee.
Employers frequently object to training employees for fear that they might defect to competitors and take their expensively acquired talents with them. Instead of not training and having them stay, it is preferable to train and have them depart.
The two groups of employees that HR departments categorize are those who believe that aptitude is intrinsic and fixed (which lowers motivation to study) and those who believe that aptitude can be enhanced via education. The company should promote the latter as a “development mindset.”
It is challenging, expensive, and somewhat unsettling to hire outside candidates. The company’s ambitious initiative to upskill its own employees is its response. Each employee would have a career profile that they update on a regular basis with information about their education and experience. Additionally, they’d access to a database, let’s call it “career intelligence” that lists the positions available within the organization along with their qualifications and level of demand.
It is challenging, expensive, and somewhat unsettling to hire outside candidates. The company’s ambitious initiative to upskill its own employees is its response. Each employee would have a career profile that they update on a regular basis with information about their education and experience. Additionally, they’d access to a database, let’s call it “career intelligence” that lists the positions available within the organization along with their qualifications and level of demand.
The company can also create quick courses through nearby colleges or on business websites like Linkedin. Employees develop their talents on their own time.
Companies would need to use both a “carrot and a stick” approach to motivate employees: offering considerable tuition assistance to those who enroll and unsatisfactory evaluation ratings to those who don’t.
Two questions come up as continuing education becomes a corporate focus. First, is it feasible for employers to use curiosity, or what psychologists refer to as “need for cognition” as a method of hiring and firing? For this kind of fundamental competence, graduating from college is one extremely rough proxy, which helps to explain why so many companies specify degrees for jobs that, on the surface, don’t seem to require them.
Is it feasible for employers to use curiosity, or what psychologists refer to as “need for cognition” as a method of hiring and firing? For this kind of fundamental competence, graduating from college is one extremely rough proxy, which helps to explain why so many companies specify degrees for jobs that, on the surface, don’t seem to require them.
Increasingly Curious
It is still too early to say whether qualities like curiosity are teachable. Yet, by helping people become more conscious of their own mental processes, it’d help help people develop more successful learning skills.
Because of the popularity of online learning, it is now easy to test theories regarding what influences learning and teaching. Personalized information is also available regarding successful study techniques. Online learning platforms today make use of dashboards to track each student’s performance and online behavior.