In a world fueled by unknowns, how do we prepare our students, our people and our organizations for the volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity (VUCA) of a world that is changing and shifting in an accelerated and often exponential ways?
What kind of knowledge and learning will be necessary and needed to traverse the future?
What types of requisite skills and abilities will be deemed valuable for the knowledge economy, amidst exponential times?
What competencies, capacities and capabilities will prove to be relevant in a world driven by accelerated obsolescence?
And the answer is…
We don’t know.
We are neither soothsayers, oracles, psychics or fortune tellers. We cannot predict the future, and for that matter, those who have tried have shown themselves to have a pretty poor track record for being correct.
However, that does not mean that we should not be much more attentive to and aware of the signals in the chaos.
Signals of opportunity, signals of change, signals of coming shifts.
We need to not only be much more aware of our own “point of view” of the future, we should also be searching to determine the signals amidst the noise not to predict, but to better forecast the future. Seeing the importance of those signals, especially in a world that is unfolding in much less linear and predictable ways, better allows us to forecast and prepare for what may come.
A world where gradually quickly turns into suddenly.
However, in the midst of today’s fake news and exponential changes, it is becoming more and more difficult to determine who and what to believe? It is becoming much harder to see the signals for the noise.
For, are we facing an uncertain future where machines have taken the majority of our jobs? Or are we just in the midst of another industrial (digital) revolution which will just require some time for adjustment?
On the one side, technologists profess staggering upheaval, even a possible dystopian future with the possibility of millions of jobs being lost to automation and artificial intelligence. Whereas, economists ride the other side of the wave, saying that this time is not like any other major change or shift of the past where new jobs will be created over time and push us through this disruption positively. While others profess less of a race against the machines and a race with the machines, as the automation and artificial intelligence will eventually take over work that is considered deadly, dirty, dangerous, and or rote and boring, while augmenting our capacity to do our work more efficiently and effectively.
But whatever side you fall towards, we still must say that it is difficult to believe that everything is going to be as it was, especially when several countries and a plethora of leaders across the world are expounding the need for a basic universal income (BUI) just to counter the current decoupling of productivity from employment as a strategy to avoid future economical collapse.
So while we can’t predict how this will play out in the future, the more aware we are, the more agile and adaptive we can become in forecasting and facing whatever changes which may spring from this current disruption.
The best thing we can do for our students, our people, and our organizations is to increase our awareness, search out those signals in the chaos, and look to better prepare ourselves for a much different future.
We can begin by looking at how the very idea of work is changing, and what impact will those changes have on education?
Let’s begin with creating a greater awareness of the types of jobs that currently exist both now and in the very near future. Consider some of these… 3D Platform Technical Evangelist, Data Scientist, Neuro-Implant Technicians, 3D Software Engineer-Scene Layers, Virtual Reality Experience Designer, Urban Farmers, just to name a few. The greater awareness we have of the types of jobs that exist, the better able we are to prepare our students for the opportunities that lie beyond graduation and our academic walls as they look to pursue their passions and success for the future.
And it’s not just job titles that are changing, but the skills and abilities required by some knowledge economy organizations, which includes but not limited to: knowledge of HTML, CSS, JavaScript, C++, Python, 3D tools such as Maya, Revit, AutoCAD, experience with SCRUM, as well as knowledge of Agile development methodologies, are just a few of the skills being requested in entry level job posting by those knowledge economy organizations.
While the Institute For the Future shares a variety of other skills for the future that they see as being important, which would include: sense making, social intelligence, novel and adaptive thinking, cross-cultural competencies, computational thinking, new media literacy, transdisciplinarity, design mindset, cognitive load management, and virtual collaboration.
And it doesn’t stop there, alongside those skills, consider these capacities and competencies requested on entry level positions from such organizations as ESRI, CA Technologies or READYTALK: “ability to work in a fast-paced team environment that sparks ingenuity and encourages innovative ideas,” “work within agile processes for short cycle, fast-paced delivery,” “take on complex goals that push the boundary of the possible,” “solve and articulate complex problems through application design, development, and exemplary user experiences,” “support continuous learning and continuous team improvement,” “coach other leaders and managers on the role of a servant leadership within the Agile organization,” “strong interpersonal, written, and oral communication skills,” as well as the “ability to effectively prioritize and execute tasks in a high-pressure environment.”
So as we talk of lesson design, room design, even system design in education, the previous statements of workforce requirements inform us (signals in the chaos), that we are going to have to begin to have a much deeper discussion around environment design. Today’s work environments are requiring much different skills-sets, capacities and competencies than what we tend to engage and create in our classrooms and schools.
So we must begin to ask ourselves, do our classrooms and schools prepare students for that type of environment?
While awareness doesn’t change everything we do, just as it doesn’t allow us to predict the future, it does allow us to not only forecast what is to come in a much more adept manner, it allows us to better determine the skills, capacities and competencies, as well as environments necessary and needed to better prepare our students, our people and our organizations for this digital disruption and the future.
In the end, it begins by understanding what does change, what doesn’t change, what remains, and what transforms. This is not an either/or proposition, it is a matter of embracing AND.
So in closing, consider these words from study by The Economist Intelligence Unit (supported by Google) on Preparing Students for the Future…
“It is no longer sufficient-if it ever was-that teachers are well versed in their subject. They must recognize that the skills a student acquires through learning are as important, if not more so, than the content, and be able to incorporate opportunities for the development of problem solving, collaborative, creative and communication skills into their teaching. These skills cannot be taught in isolation but must be present across the curriculum, embedded in the fabric of how teachers teach.”
DCulberhouse 