Dilip Mukerjea writes in his new book, Learning How to Learn (still in the works; to be released shortly; this is a sneak preview!):

THE PARAMETERS OF THE LEARNING ECONOMY: LEARNING AND SKILLING

Within the churn of ever-changing and volatile technological trends, the only way professionals and organisations can sustain themselves is through the cycle of lifelong “Learning, Unlearning and Relearning.” 

This discipline must be complemented by the heartbeat of the acronym “CURE”: 

1. Cross-Skilling: 

Learning skills from domains other than their core, to perform beyond existing roles and responsibilities. Professionals should be able to work on multiple technologies rather than having mastery over just one technology to do justice to the constantly evolving job roles and responsibilities and volatile work environments. 

Additionally, cross-skilling helps professionals gain a better understanding of the process from start to finish. This boosts job satisfaction as well. 

2. Up-Skilling: 

In light of exponential, technological advances, professionals have to regularly upskill through undiminishing regimes of learning and development. Hands-on practice and application are needed now more than ever to upskill and be proficient in new skills being acquired, and further skills demanding attention. 

3. Re-Skilling: 

Today’s technologies, and those that are emerging within the accelerating future, have a short shelf-life. As a result, professionals need to enable themselves to constantly keep learning new skills, so as to stay relevant to current trends and abreast of marketspace demands; Re-skilling helps professionals sharpen their business acumen, their critical, creative, and systems thinking skills, and exponentially raises their employability quotient. 

4. Expert-Skilling: 

While cross-skilling is the spreading of one’s skillset breadth-wise, expert skilling is going deep, much deeper. Attaining hands-on experience in technologies while solving real-world problems under the guidance of industry experts has been the standard way of learning. A thorough expertise refers to a project well taken care of. 

Experts at technology are seen as assets to organisations. The scaling in companies is another issue – whether it is down-scaling or up-scaling, the professional who is cross-skilled, up-skilled, expert-skilled or re-skilled is expected to thrive! 

In summary, as professionals embrace the CURE concept and practice, their organisations will breed future business adaptiveness, agility, and resilience! 

Today, we are in The Learning Economy! The creative brain capital resident within a nation’s citizenry will determine the emergence of winners in an ecosystem of stampeding idea-brokers. 

We are in a “VUCANT“ world, where Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, Ambiguity, Novelty, and Turbulence prevail: game-changing challenges compel us to continually think, learn, and create, in unreal time, so that we move ahead from volatility to vision, uncertainty to understanding, complexing to clarity, ambiguity to agility, novelty to noteworthiness, and turbulence to tranquillity. 

This means that we must be able to: 

• convert information into usable intelligence. 

• come up with simple solutions to complex problems. 

• understand and appreciate that true TQM equates directly with effective brain and heart usage.

The corporations that survive in the long term will be those with “smart teams” that are able to think quick, move fast, manoeuvre 

The corporations that survive in the long term will be those with “smart teams” that are able to think quick, move fast, manoeuvre  flexibly, and are more focused through the medium of “relaxed alertness.” 

The possession of knowledge alone, without subsequent application, will produce a pundit rather than a practitioner. 

True knowledge resides in ultimately doing, not merely knowing about, and talking about.