📨 Subscribe | 🤖 AI Training | 🚀 Courses

Today’s Thoughts ☠️

Ahoy there 👋,

Who knew we’d speak so soon?

Well, technically we both did as I told you in Friday’s chat but let’s ignore that for the sake of my opener.

I’ve spent the best part of the week diving into the psychology behind job titles and skills. It’s not as fancy as it sounds. With each new tech innovation, the inevitable “Will x take my job question” arise.

Of course, we see this again with AI.

It’s nothing new. My thesis is that we have a skewed version of the definition of a job in today’s world. It blinds us to what is truly valuable and helps us navigate the choppy waters of change.

The thing we often don’t see are skills.

Today is all about rethinking what we know about the career economy and how we advance in it.

Join me for some dangerous thoughts, questionable cocktail party answers (never been to a cocktail party in my life, fyi) and a boatload of the best GIFs you’ll see this week.

Get your tea or beverage of choice ready, 🍵.

We've got lots to discuss!

→ Much love to today’s sponsor, Learnexus ❤️

In today’s chat:

• 😮 How Skills Killed The Job Title And Why That’s Not A Bad Thing

• 🤔 If you can’t measure the value of AI, it’s useless

TOGETHER WITH LEARNEXUS

Join the invite-only AI community for L&D Leaders

GenAI is transforming modern organisations and L&D leaders need to adapt.

Learnexus HQ is a (free) invite-only community that provides roundtables, workshops, reports, and data all focused on the intersection of AI and L&D.

Join 500+ other L&D leaders on topics like 'Using Sentiment Analysis for Surveys', 'Prompt Engineering for Course Development', and more.

Membership is limited to Managers and above in training and related learning roles.

Ready to level up?

THE BIG THOUGHT
How Skills Killed The Job Title And Why That’s Not A Bad Thing

How many times have you been asked the question, “So, what do you do?”

I wonder if people even know what they mean when they ask that.

I usually respond to this question with comical answers for my benefit. Sometimes I revert to my completely sarcastic self. I’ll say, “Well, I’m a confused late-thirty-something with no clue what’s next, worries about the future, and now I’m trying to find my best self…what about you?”

They often respond with blank stares.

When I try to explain what I actually do for work, those stares become even deeper.

Although impressive in my head, explaining to others that I juggle 10 different job roles to make cold hard cash complicates things. The problem is that we use a ‘job’ as the reference point for the explanation. Whereas, the title means nothing. I deploy a diverse set of skills to create a career I enjoy.

But that doesn’t sound as sexy or aligned with the ‘societal view.’

So, I just mumble something like, “I work in learning and development. What about you?”

Conversations with strangers at parties, events, or whatever always turn into unexpected learning experiences. The weird intro of ‘Who are you and what do you do?’ has always felt odd to me.

Do they ask me what I do as a human, or do they just want to know about the job that pays me and provides my standing in society?

Come to think of it, why do we make professional occupation the first thing we ask people we’ve just met? Who even made this the norm? – so many questions.

Job titles create a mess.

We often use them to determine how to value someone and what they’re good at. Most of us know they don’t work, yet we still play the game. They form the wrong metric on any playing field. Value comes from many measurements and is incredibly context-specific.

For work in the modern era, job titles mean nothing.

Skills act as the currency we must focus on in the career economy. Many companies have woken up to this in the last few years.

If you didn’t focus on skill improvement all this time, what were you doing?

The skills economy

We now play in a new economy of skills, and digital technology has only advanced this shift.

Era-defining tech innovations often bring this shift. We saw it in the eras of modern computing and the internet. We’re experiencing it now with the rise of generative AI technology.

New tech always enhances the way we do tasks. I think the word ‘job’ is where people get stuck. For so long, people moved through company tiers based on a job title.

We should step back to deconstruct what we mean by the term “job.”

Jobs basically consist of a collection of tasks for which you’re responsible. In exchange for financial compensation, you provide skills to complete these tasks. Today, we talk more about skills than titles. This makes sense because when tasks change, roles change.

For example, 20 years ago, the role of Social Media Manager didn’t exist.

Although commonplace today, the technology required to create the demand for this role had not yet exploded. We hadn’t become glued to our screens in a hypnotic state of doom-scrolling. These roles eventually came along to amplify that.

This role emerged due to the demand for new tasks.

Thus, the ‘job’ of social media manager was born. Over many years, it replicated into a family of roles to manage social media platform-related tasks. This family of roles is now evolving with the introduction of generative AI tools. The way people perform these tasks is changing, so the nature of these roles changes too.

Here we have the circle of life or the circle of work…something like that.

AI exposes the need for diverse skills

That sounds like a ‘captain obvious’ thing to say, but hey, it’s written now.

Each new digital tech innovation brings job destruction and creation. Again, a natural cycle in the shifting demands of life and work. I believe that in the long term, we’ll use generative AI, and other models, to manage boring tasks. This gives us the space, energy, and focus to do more human stuff.

I see Gen AI enabling more builders.

Not everyone can or will want to be a builder. However, the choice will be more accessible than before. This will offer a host of new skills, tasks, and jobs.

For L&D, we could enable more of us to design better solutions across the spectrum of our industry effectively. Finally, leaving behind L&D teams as a dumping site to take care of all the bits and bobs. Let AI do that.

In some ways, I hope Gen AI can enhance our skills and tasks, so we can be more strategic and meaningful in where we put our effort.

My last three years of exploring and experimenting have made one thing clear: The need for diverse human and tech skills is growing at a pace I’ve not experienced in my lifetime.

Skills, not job titles = opportunity

Outside of Gen AI’s potential to enhance learning, the value of your skills has been (and always will be) a big focus of my work.

I positioned the idea of skills being the currency in the career marketplace in my book.

I’ve seen many examples of this in my nearly 20-year (shit, I’m getting old) career. Those who do well and create the career they want all crafted a diverse set of skills. They didn’t rely on being so and so at x company.

To thrive in the modern era, we must leave behind what we know about the career economy.

Technology will continue to change how we complete tasks. Focusing on our skills will yield better opportunities than aiming for a title.

Skills killed the job title and that’s not a bad thing.

Will x take my job?

The most popular question at the time I write this is, “Will AI take my job?”

As we’ve discussed, it’s not the jobs that are shifting, but rather the tasks that form that job. So, the job will likely change. You can take out the word AI and replace it with all these innovations from our history:

• Will the Printing Press take my job?

• Will the Calculator take my job?

• Will the Internet take my job?

• Will PowerPoint take my job?

• Will Excel take my job?

We know what happened here.

For some, it did, but then they had new tasks which formed new roles. Those who did well were the ones who had diverse skills and adapted. In the early ’90s, accountants feared Excel. Now they wield it like some dark magic which has greatly enhanced how they work.

To ride the wave of inevitable change, craft the best skills for the era you work in.

The skills you should focus on

The answer to this is incredibly subjective based on your industry.

From a broader perspective, we can look at high-value skills that will serve us well in the future across any industry. I spent 12 months reviewing over 20 global skills reports to answer the ultimate question: “What are the 5 skills that matter for the future of work?”

Here they are:

I’d strongly recommend reading the full article (of course I do, I wrote it so I’m biased), plus the accompanying piece I wrote on the power of unlocking the right connective skills to build out your capabilities.

Final Thoughts

1. Skills are your most valuable currency in the career economy.

2. Adapt to your era of work with the right skills for the right time.

3. Don’t place your bets on a job title protecting your future career prospects.

4. Being future-fit = crafting a diverse skill set.

Till next time.

SMART THOUGHTS

🤔  The worlds 50 biggest EdTech companies picked by Time Magazine

Fun fact, I’ve never read Time magazine.

A friend sent me this list of their top 50 EdTech companies to look over. Good to see lots of familiar names and not so familiar to wider audiences finally being recognised for their work.

These lists are always subjective. You can decide for yourself.

💡 If you can’t measure the value of AI, it’s useless

Here’s a look to how Microsoft users can measure the value of all of its AI delights across your company.

In the hysteria of acquiring shiny new things, not enough questions are being asked about the value they deliver. Here’s a few insights to help you measure progress with AI.

🔥  You can now build online courses with Canva

I suppose we shouldn’t be totally surprised by this.

Canva has been slowly expanding it’s empire over the last few years moving into many creative areas. Course creation seems like a no-brainer.

Here’s what they are offering.

How I can help you

1. My L&D toolkit stack + AI For L&D Lab with 50 zero-cost tools.
   
   

2. Work smarter with AI in L&D with my Crash Course: A 2-hour AI Crash Course for Next-Gen L&D Professionals. Join 300 + students to future-proof your skills and work smarter with practical use cases in L&D.
   
   → Access all courses at the STT Dojo.
   
   

3. Join The Cult of Thoughts 🏴‍☠️: Get access to exclusive deep dives, events and perks with our premium membership - The Cult of Thoughts 🏴‍☠️.
   
   Your investment gets you more great content and helps me keep doing this for you until the world’s tea supply runs out.
   
   

   → Exclusive subscriber-only Monthly newsletter

   → Private catalogue of toolkits and insights

   → Workshops, events and perks
   
   

4. Stalk me on LinkedIn for daily insights, tools and frameworks for modern L&D pros.

Want to reach over 3,000 L&D pros?

Learn how you can sponsor the newsletter