Over time, human life expectancy has grown five times over. However, being human isn’t just about being alive! It’s about being better. The key differentiator between just being and being better is – Skills. As human species, we have consistently gathered newer skills leading us to live a better fulfilling life.
Developments of the past few centuries have become an exemplary showcase of how the slower evolutionary skills gathered over millions of years have now been transformed into rapid revolutionary cycles of progress, brought about by the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th industrial revolutions. Although this trend continues to accelerate, it seems to have come with some unwelcome side-effects that are causing massive disruptions and leaving us with a sense of bewilderment. Nevertheless, skills play an important role in making human lives better.
Everyone nurtures a variety of skills over the years. However, few amongst us stop and ask ourselves this crucial 21st century question, which is: To which of the following four categories – Technological, Social, Physical and Cognitive, do our most happily effective skills belong? Can you take a moment of thoughtful pause to answer this question? Please do so, since it can perhaps open an opportunity for you to be happily skilled in life.
After you have answered this question yourself, please compare it with this infographic that contains the response results of the same question polled to industry professionals and management students recently.
Barring the Social skills category, the cumulative variance on other categories is about 50%! Why is there a significant difference in the response choices of those from the industry and those in their final academia journey? Is this perhaps yet another pointer to the skills gap that everyone knows about but few act to bridge?
India’s NEP 2020 aims to comprehensively address and solve a lot of direct and related issues related to literacy, education, skills gap etc. This will take some time to fetch results driven by the well-coordinated effort of millions of educators, professionals, students and citizens. Is there an easier way to get the 600 million working age population of Indian citizens to be happily skilled and industry ready? I believe there is and it can happen if every individual can take it upon themselves to be happily skilled to be industry ready with a three steps to-do.
Step 1 To-Do
This one is easy to get started. All you need to do is make a list of skills that you have acquired over time that are effective for you and also make you happy! Effective skills are those that fetch you a tangible reward upon their execution, since they are of value to others. Happy skills are those you have acquired over the years and you just enjoy it when you are executing them for yourself or for anyone else. For example, if you are a professional, you may have acquired a skill for building healthy rewarding relationships (a social skill) with your customers, colleagues and other peer professionals. You find yourself happy executing it, growing your relationships and it has fetched you a tangible, consistent results over time, be it in the form of sales, or rewards or recognitions. In short, you have a skill that you are happy executing and others value it too.
As you think about your acquired skills, you will come across skills that make you happy but are of no relevance to others OR skills that fetch you a return but you are not quite happy executing them. This information too is valuable and can be listed separately. For example, this can include your math skill assuming you are good at it, but would happily give up, given a choice! Once your list is ready, complete your step 1 to do, by sorting them each into the four distinct categories namely – Technological, Social, Cognitive and Physical. You will notice that these are the same categories as reflected in the poll results of the survey mentioned earlier.
The result of your Step 1 To-Do will be your “Present” skills status!
Step 2 To-Do
This to-do will require some good dedicated effort from you. It requires you to systematically comprehend your present skills status with available benchmarks on the status of global skills, their importance and their expected future demand. Research reports on global skills are published on an ongoing basis by several organizations such as the World Economic Forum, etc. The best way is to pick a couple of such curated reports and make the best use of information there-in for yourselves.
Thoughtful comparison of your skills status will provide you with an accurate assessment of your three-dimensional skills gap. The gap vis-à-vis present industry needs, the gap vis-à-vis future industry needs and the gap vis-à-vis skills that make you happy and that fetch you a return from their value to others. If you do not have the time or patience or both to do this, not to worry – there is a smart way forward to sort your skills puzzle! Read on.
Step 3 To-Do
The final to-do is to bridge your own skills gap drawn up by you from the step 1 and step 2 to-do’s. If you do wish/need to be happily skilled to be industry ready, there are tons of offline and online self-development bridges available for you to learn and upskill yourselves in an increasingly connected, communicable and collaborative world.
In order to inspire individuals – citizens, educators, professionals and students arrive at a thoughtful plan to execute Step 1, 2, and 3, there’s an interesting and compelling 18 minutes of audio-video content available. It is based on global research and sprinkled with several real-world examples that everyone may not be aware of, but will certainly be able to relate with. It also provides assorted inputs with examples and actionable to-dos. It will be made available for FREE for subscribers at https://valurevolution.com/subscribe
Go, get it now!
About Writer
Sunil Tatkar is the founder of Valurevolution. He is a military boarding school alumnus and a 1990 mechanical engineer graduate from VJTI, Mumbai. Sunil as over 30+ years of experience as a professional and entrepreneur in varied functional roles across several business and technology enterprises. Sunil is also a professional, an entrepreneur, a content writer, an art enthusiast, a marathoner and an educator who can engage learners of all ages with his flair for participative training and workshops. He has created an experiential self-development program for everyone to learn and upskill, named after the two gifts we all have – “Human Cognition and Know How”. The program modules have got a 4.8/5.0 rating from learners across several MOOC and online interactive platforms. The program is in sync with the guidance and recommendations of several national policy initiatives and global research recommendations. These include the NEP 2020, Delors Report, WHO Life Skills, OECD, P21, ACS, UNESCO Working Paper, World Economic Forum and CBSE 21st Century Skills Handbook. Sunil’s profile at https://www.linkedin.com/in/sunil-tatkar-81b7528/ Sunil is reachable at suniltatkar@valurevolution.com
