Tags: Skills

My mantra for 2014

Posted by mattpoy on Posted in Culture, Next Gen, People, People Skills Talent, Talent Tagged , ,

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The new year is one of the busiest times in the calendar for people looking for inspiration, exploring change and opening at least one eye to new jobs.

I spent most of 2013 talking about talent and the value of our people as our number one differentiator. I will kick off 2014 by helping integrate a division into our business and welcoming a few new people into my team, and with technological change increasing its influence on our work and home lives, it is important to maintain focus on our talent pool.

One of the last presentations I delivered in 2013 was at the cool offices of ITV, thanks to Andy Kyriacou who set up the event. I was inspired by the people who work at ITV but most importantly by how engaged they all were.

The CEO at ITV, Adam Crozier, the man that led much of the cultural change made in the last few years there, once said:

“Silver bullets rarely exist – when great things happen, they happen because of good people, teamwork, fantastic amounts of hard work and a giant dose of luck.”

So this has become my chief principle for 2014: look after our people and create the theatre for them to deliver, for they are the best thing we’ve got.

Technology and our leaders of tomorrow

Posted by mattpoy on Posted in Pearson, People, People Skills Talent, Skills, Uncategorized Tagged , , ,

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I was thrilled to be asked by the Pearson Diversity team to present to the interns who joined our organisation this week and I was even more pleased to see how positive they were.

I chose to present something different – with our company tagline being ‘Always Learning’ I didn’t want to just talk about our division and the business we are in, so I told them why I think they are our future! I sprinkled my story with technology of course, but my emphasis was on talent.

I took this direction because I was enthused by a person who inspires me, CEO of Burberry Angela Ahrendts. She recently posted on the importance of storytelling. Each time I have been truly uplifted by a presentation, it was because of the story told and shared, and in the current digitally-driven world, where are we are often overwhelmed with information, rediscovering the age-old principles of storytelling will help us connect and differentiate, so I took that course.

It paid off – I met some great young people, our workforce of now and our leaders of tomorrow, and I had fun telling sharing story.

Normal is boring

Posted by mattpoy on Posted in Pearson, People, People Skills Talent, Skills, Talent Tagged , , ,

A student was asked to describe her good teachers but she couldn’t, explaining that they were all so different, but she could easily describe her bad teachers because they were all the same.

A recent, brilliant report from Sir Michael Barber at our company, Pearson, about the future of education called ‘An Avalanche is Coming’  (www.pearson.com/avalanche) emphasised great teachers as one of the biggest differentiators in learning, and we see it time and again where students of all ages are inspired because of the person that leads their class.

Isn’t that always the case? Whatever a company stands for, is it not always the people building the relationships, doing the deals and serving the customers who are the face of our companies? Therefore why do we attempt to recruit anything but the best to represent us? As the great quotes states, “If you think it’s expensive to hire a professional, wait until you hire an amateur.”

Some companies I know such as Cisco Systems recruit staff at odd places, such as the finish line of great races, because they figure these are people with true character, grit and determination.

Normal is boring, quirky is memorable and remarkable is the difference between success and failure.

Pick-and-Mix

Posted by mattpoy on Posted in Education, Skills, Technology Tagged , , ,

I enjoyed being a part of the ‘Voice of Apprenticeships’ Conference this week, where I presented immediately before Skills Minister Matthew Hancock MP. I shared my views on how technology is changing not just how we must think about educating the next generation but how we engage and reach these students today.

MOOCs, Massive Open Online Courses, are getting a lot of press currently and the UK’s FutureLearn programme led by the Open University is leading the way. Smartphones and tablets are changing how we absorb information and education must follow suit, in smaller, bite-sized chunks, when and where the learner chooses to digest it.

Education may well take the form of a pick-and-mix bag of choices, but hopefully not as expensive as the pick-and-mix outlets selling confectionery. It may be that the role of the education institution includes tracking and approving building blocks of learning that add up to a unique qualification and that very few degrees actually look the same, but are pieced together based on an individual’s requirements and more importantly, the needs of a job role and the workplace.

What are the choices? History and prestige means the top tier universities will always have a demand for places, because of the prestige of having the institution listed on one’s CV or profile on LinkedIn. But for the rest, there is no choice. The majority of learning establishments have to change their value proposition; a student in a small town in England, or even as far as Africa or Asia, won’t pay to attend a mediocre lecture, when they can learn online from world experts.

The Professions Paradox

Posted by mattpoy on Posted in People, Skills, Technology Tagged , , ,

Technology is one of the great levellers. With a smart and creative online presence, a small business can often give the impression of a large organisation, and yet technology alone doesn’t hold the key moving forward.

A look at unemployment rates across Europe shows that the employment bubble of the past 30 years has burst and the need for lower-skilled roles is drying up. There are currently 25m unemployed people in Europe plus 15m discouraged workers, which together would make the unemployment rate over 15% in total. Plus, over 20% of the true unemployed in Europe are under 24.

Yet a common thread amongst employers looking to fill skilled positions is that they can’t find the staff, and this trend is global! Almost half of employers in Europe report a shortage of skills (Accenture: ‘Turning the Tide’ survey).

By 2020, it will only get worse. An extra 16m high skilled jobs will be needed, countered by a decline of 12m less low-skilled positions.

That was the landscape. We must solve it by training and certifying our employees; we must use ‘big data’ to predict, anticipate and better target our customers, and we must apply technology to engage and connect everyone to our brand. Once again, the solution revolves around companies investing in their people, and individuals investing in themselves, in lifelong learning, in whatever shape that may take.

One of my favourite quotes comes from Richard Reed, one of the founders of Innocent, the smoothie drinks maker, “You can imitate our services and technology, but not the quality of our people.” I am guessing not many people choose to leave that company in a hurry.

The MOOC thing

Posted by mattpoy on Posted in Education, Future of Technology, Learning, Skills Tagged , , ,

Technology continues to disrupt and next in line is education. There has been a lot written about Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) and many renowned institutions are involved – Harvard, MIT, Stanford and more recently the Open University here in the UK with their FutureLearn model. The Khan Academy, launched by Salman Khan, delivers 200m classes via YouTube, with zero hosting costs, now that is clever.

MOOCs are still trying to establish their model and this may take some time, but what is really important is that traditional learning institutions cannot just sit back and disregard this wave of change. I accept that tier-one universities such as Harvard or Cambridge will always have demand for places due to the prestige associated with studying there. But a student in Europe or Asia will refuse to pay large sums of money to sit in a mediocre lecture in their own country when they can learn online from world class tutors and be associated with a leading university.

Currently the MOOC interest is more about bridging the gap between current knowledge and acquiring new skills in order to do a better job, or find a new one. These modular, bite-sized chunks of learning are possibly the icing on the cake. If 5 candidates interview for one role and have a similar degree and one has an additional 20 certificates of mastery in a specific area of study, it is likely that their CV will stand out. In today’s world, it is all about differentiation. The modules offered by MOOCs not only allow an individual to keep up with changes in the business world but possibly in future even anticipate how market sectors will evolve.

This is just one example. Technology is breaking up the majority, the mainstream and the mundane. Which sector is next?

Hardware, Software or Brainware

Posted by mattpoy on Posted in Future of Technology, People, People Skills Talent, Skills, Talent Tagged , , ,

I am just back from the European ATP conference, where more than 200 certification and assessment experts gathered to discuss learning and testing and its future. As always the common thread throughout all presentations and panel sessions was technology. From ‘Bring Your Own Device’ to student engagement via social media, technology excited the delegates but also made some nervous about change.

Vice-Chancellor of the Open University, Martin Bean, a personal friend and mentor for some 20 years, delivered a sensational presentation showing how his institution was moving with the times. From the Frozen Planet to iTunesU, the OU continues to lead the way both here and abroad. Our Group CEO Rona Fairhead (of the Financial Times Group, the division of Pearson I work for) shared the most thought-provoking of stories talking about the professions paradox. So many people, so few skills and demand continues to grow. We will stumble and fall if we don’t address the skills shortfall that faces all Europe.

I had just 20 minutes in my session to highlight how some of the tech-trends are weaving into education, especially through mobility and handheld devices, and as always, I finished on no small matter of ‘Tomorrow’s Talent.’ One of the key messages that connected many presentations was that we must nurture our next generation of talent and understand them on their terms. If we don’t, they will opt not to work for us, because as we encounter a thinning supply of skilled people and we operate in what I call a stock market of human resources, it will be the holders of those intellectual assets (not hardware or software but ‘brainware’) who will wield the most power. They will choose their employer or go it alone, and we will be left with the greatest technology and no people to make effective use of it.

Gold Dust

Posted by mattpoy on Posted in People, People Skills Talent, Skills, Talent, Technology Tagged , , ,

One of my favourite meetings recently was with Alan Loader (Publisher) and Sara Yirrell (Editor) of CRN magazine, part of the IncisiveMedia group. The conversation could easily have continued all afternoon. We talked about the speed at which technology is dictating how we do business, how education will remain the single biggest differentiator regardless of change and that the best people are becoming more elusive.

Alan coined a great term in human gold dust– how it is becoming harder to find good people and more importantly to retain them, to motivate them to stay. Surveys tell us the same thing over and over, that it isn’t always about more money. If somebody is fundamentally not happy doing their job, a few thousand pounds will not change those feelings and 3 months down the line, you will be back in the same position. My earliest blog posts talked about a formula, a magic blend of rapidly changing technology plus talented people equalling tomorrow’s great companies. This is the here and now.

Furthermore, Seth Godin asked, “Do we have to pander” [to people, to customers]? Should we trade our reputations for a short-term boost of awareness or profits? He argues that if we want to build a reputation that lasts, to be the voice that some (not all) in the market seek out, you must resist short-term greed and build something that matters. The same applies with our people. Don’t compromise just to fill a position. Look for the best, give them the bandwidth to be creative and spend a percentage of their time on crazy new ideas, and let them be exceptional. Let them use the technology at their disposal to promote your product or service from every conceivable angle, as long as what they do ties into a central theme for your business.

I think you will find they will flourish, and stay.

Remember, Remember

Posted by mattpoy on Posted in Future of Technology, Learning, Skills, Technology Tagged , , ,

I am just back from co-hosting the Pearson VUE Global Sales Summit, where the business development and client support teams from round the globe descended on Minneapolis to discuss learning and assessment technologies, share case studies and talk futures. It was an excellent event.

At breakfast in the hotel the waiter asked me if I would like some cranberry juice, my morning potion. How did he remember after so many months? That is some service. This led me to think where I would like to see technology heading in the learning space, using IT to remember our learning preferences.

I have been involved in many discussions around lifelong learning and how it will be the responsibility of the individual to keep their skills up to date, as companies reduced their core and people move around from project to project putting their skills and expertise to use. What we need is an App on our devices that tracks our learning, recognises completion of a module specific to our immediate task at hand and then recommends when we are ready for the next stage, each time suggesting local providers, special offers and development opportunities.

If the technology at our disposal can recommend discounted meals, city breaks and electronic goods, why can it not also recommend bite-sized chunks of learning and tailored education – the most important investment of all?