Continuous Learning Is the Key to Success in a Rapidly Changing World

We are living in a time of economic uncertainty. Jobs are rapidly changing. We’re past the old model that clearly separated the time in your life when you learn — through K-12, often to college, and sometimes into graduate school — from the career portion of your life. And we’re better off for it: Today, continuous skill-building lets us learn new technologies, explore new ideas, and adapt. It is the key to success in the modern workplace.

But continuous learning is about more than acquiring new skills. It’s a mindset. It’s a way of thinking about yourself and your place in the world, one that recognizes that a dynamic economy requires individuals to keep changing and growing, too. Continuing to learn and grow is also a way to add meaning and purpose to your work. It can bring a deeper sense of fulfillment, making daily tasks more meaningful and aligned with your long-term goals. When you invest in your own growth, you're both advancing your career and enriching your journey.

Indeed, at every stage of life and career, education is the most transformational lever you can deploy to cultivate agility, build resilience, drive innovation, and ultimately create economic uplift — for individuals, their families, and society.

Continuing to learn is the competitive advantage of the 21st century.

As artificial intelligence transforms the business world, for example, the risk isn’t that workers will be replaced by AI tools — it’s that workers who don’t know how to leverage AI to do their jobs better will be replaced by those who do. Those who can use AI to work more efficiently will be more valuable employees than those who can’t. It’s a perfect example of how ongoing skills training can make all the difference in helping you to succeed in a rapidly evolving workplace.

I’m not just an advocate for lifelong learning; I’m also someone who has benefited from it. Whether from colleagues , from courses, from books, or from experts, I’m always developing new skills and trying out new ideas, so that I can be a better leader, a better colleague, even a more fulfilled person.

First, one of my priorities is to surround myself with smart, strategic, creative people who are regularly challenging me and teaching me new things. That’s true both in my team and in my broader network. When everyone is bringing their best and generating new ideas, it means that I am always learning from the people around me.

Second, I’ve recognized that one of the most valuable skills that has helped me grow as a CEO is learning to “unlearn.” Early in your career, it’s critical to have deep expertise in a very specific domain, for example as a digital marketer. But as you grow your career, you need different skills. Once you’re managing people, your expertise needs to shift from that deep domain knowledge to learning about leadership, influence, and communication. As I moved into a CEO role, I needed to develop broader management and strategic thinking skills. It meant unlearning some of what I had learned before.

Third, I take short courses when I can to explore new areas and broaden my perspectives. During the pandemic, for example, I took a course on ikigai, the Japanese method for living a joyous and happy life. I’ve taken these learnings and have been working toward applying them to help achieve work-life balance.

And finally I’ve discovered a range of books and techniques that help me to continuously improve as a leader and manager. Some of my favorites are:

Crossing the Chasm, by Geoffrey A. Moore. It’s a book with great insights on marketing innovative new products. It recognises that there are real differences between early adopters of new technologies and the mainstream market, and it provides advice for getting your new product or company across that chasm. I’ve found it useful in my startup career, and it provides helpful guidelines for making decisions.

The Disciplined Entrepreneurship Workbook, by Bill Aulet. This is a smart and practical guidebook to being an entrepreneur. Aulet is a professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management, and he developed a 24-step framework that’s been proven to help founders build a successful business. This workbook guides you through the framework as you build a successful startup.

3-D Negotiation, by David A. Lax and James K. Sebenius. This negotiating strategy helps you get the result you want by considering not only tactics at the negotiating table (the first dimension) and how the deal is designed (the second dimension) but also how the negotiation is even structured in the first place (the too rarely considered third dimension). Lax and Sebenius emphasise preconditions like making sure the right people are at the table, the proper issues are being considered, and that they are considered in the right order with the appropriate set of expectations. I’ve found their method instrumental to success in my startups.

The Three Box Solution, by Vijay Govindarajan, is the best model I’ve seen for how to transform an existing business — or even to pivot your startup. Govindarajan, a professor at the Dartmouth Tuck School of Business, recognizes that creating a new business — innovation — is a fundamentally different management problem than overhaul — or optimising — a new one. His three boxes are The Present, which requires effective management; The Past, which must be thrown out; and The Future, which requires creativity and discipline to build into profitable new lines of business. It’s a great way to look at managing transformation.

These are guides and frameworks that I’ve found helpful. There are many other approaches to be explored, some of which will fit your needs better. But the key point is today’s world, you must be constantly engaging with new ideas and learning new skills. It’s key to ongoing professional success — and, I think, key to being a happier person.