Lifelong Learning? No need, no time!

>>Find the German Version here<<

The title of my keynote at the #LLLCamp organized by Holger Gelhausen on June 15th seems a bit provocative at first sight, but I often notice that people find "lifelong learning" important (almost 100% in surveys), but still a different view emerges when they are asked: "Do you block time in your calendar every week to learn?

"Let's face it. I work at least eight hours a day, and even then I can't do everything. And besides I'm working on exciting topics and I learn every day, I now should have extra time to learn? For what? And how is that possible?"

Yes, I agree with what the participants wrote in the #LLLCamp chat: "You can't "not learn" or "working means learning" or "learning happens on the job". I myself am a big fan of "learning on the job" as I have written in the context of 70-20-10.

So why block extra time?

Let's start with some data: In the World Economic Forum Report "Future of Jobs 2018" the following visualization is used, which describes, based on surveys, that there will be a certain number of jobs that are more or less stable.

And that at the same time, however, through transformation, digitalization, new business models and new products and services, etc., a not inconsiderable number of jobs will change (i.e. disappear or be newly created or something in between).

And actually, the German government assumes that those transformations will ultimately create more jobs in Germany than the number of jobs that will be lost. Is it a good motivation for people to learn if they are told: "Your job will be lost, you have to learn? No, I think that is actually not a good motivation. Especially since it might not be 5 years and actually with many jobs where nobody can predict that exactly.

That's why I like to show a second chart from the Future of Jobs Survey 2018, World Economic Forum - Figure 7: Expected average reskilling needs across companies, by share of employees, 2018-2022.

This survey shows that there will be a considerable need for further learning, training and education for over half of the jobs. I am critical myself in saying that 46% of the jobs do not require any further qualification. From my point of view, I would rather interpret the figures to mean that for these jobs the continuous learning during work is sufficient and that no extra time needs to be blocked (as long as I want to do this one job for the rest of my life). But then what about the other 54%?

And here we are again on the subject, so if it is not enough to learn things by trying and working, then it would probably not be a bad idea to block time? (See survey result above)

And while everyone is talking about megatrends and VUCA, and if no one can tell me exactly what is changing and how, and which jobs are being created, etc., then good competence models can only help me to a limited extent, or only give a good direction, and "imposed" learning offers often have little actual perceived relevance. Instead, it would probably simply be better to start with a reflection:

What do I really want?

Where do I want to go? What contribution do I want to make in this society? How has my job changed in the last few years or maybe even in the last 3 months? How do I want my work to look in the future?

   Which skills and competences do I want to learn or think I need in the future?

The exciting thing is that no one can tell me, but if I do this reflection myself, then I am in the leadership position and then I decide and then the result is really relevant for me! (The fact that leaders/managers play an essential supporting role here is self-evident for me in the corporate context, but I do not want to limit this to that).

And I just learned from Werner Motzet on Twitter that there is a homepage for Germany that can help me to reflect on how my job can be influenced by digitalization: https://job-futuromat.iab.de/

It's not about describing exactly what I need for the next 5 years, but more about defining the next step and then focusing on the next topic. And maybe a backlog will help me not to overwhelm myself but to stay flexible:

No time?

The Data Report 2016 (Social Report) of the German Federal Agency for Civil Education published a few years ago a statistic that says that in Germany people between the ages of 30 and 44 years use about 9 minutes per day of new learning in average.

And people in the average age between 45 and 64 years only 4 minutes. That makes a total of about 20 days or 9 days in 5 years. But the WEF Future of Jobs Survey says that everyone (!) needs about 101 days of learning in the period 2018 to 2020. And here is the discrepancy. Of course, our calendars are full of appointments, creating documents, conference calls and last but not least, all gaps are quickly filled with emails and other things.

Even more important that we consciously take time to learn! And that can also be reading a blog, for example by Harald Schirmer (LIKEs are more than appreciation) or as Ragnar Heil wrote, "you often learn when you write a blog yourself or share your knowledge with others".

And that's what I am all about, there is no longer just one "formal learning", but a mixture of inspiration, learning, collaboration and connections to other people from whom we can learn. Thanks also to Oliver Ewinger for his great contribution to learning with Twitter. (Here is a great German learning video of the #CLC2025 community on this topic)

Lifelong learning - The most important questions

• Do you actually know what is relevant for you in the future?
• What do you actually want to learn next?
• What does your development activity list look like?
• How do you integrate regular learning into your daily work and life?
• Who can help you?
• And how can you help others?

And then please don't mix it up:

Lifelong Learning is not a #Buzzword any longer! But it starts with YOU!

Lifelong learning?

I need it!

I take the time!