Obsolescence of hard skills
Hard skills have an expiration date. According to data from the World Economic Forum and Deloitte, the "lifespan" of a technical skill has decreased from about 30 years (in 1970) to less than 5 years today!
So what would be worth investing in? Certainly not in fancy programming languages or specialized certifications, but in an often completely overlooked soft skill: the ability to be "hungry" for knowledge.
Learning agility
Learning agility or intellectual curiosity is not linked to the obsessive desire to read many books or to know, but coincides with a magical combination of three major factors.
1. Rapid learning - Learn quickly from new experiences.
2. Willingness to unlearn - It takes the courage to abandon old systems, beliefs, and patterns that are now obsolete.
3. Cross-industry connectivity - It takes the right amount of creativity to take an idea from one sector and apply it to another. For a disruptive example, moving from gardening to marketing!
Pillars of Intellectual Curiosity
How can intellectual curiosity be expressed in everyday life? Through the following additional fundamental pillars.
On the one hand, an exploratory mindset is necessary. This involves actively seeking out the unknown and being proactive.
On the other hand, a certain tolerance for ambiguity is required. This means feeling comfortable with uncertainty and making decisions even when you don't have all the information.
Finally, there must be critical reflection, an essential prerequisite for analyzing negative feedback without judgment and learning from mistakes.
Training curiosity
It's clear we're emphasizing the importance of aspects and skills that can't be learned from any textbook. So how can we train curiosity?
Like any sport and muscle training, simply joining a gym isn't enough. You have to go!
Here are some helpful tips.
The "Why" rule: When you have a problem, ask yourself the reason five times. The goal is to get to the root, not the symptom.
Expand your world map: spend a few minutes studying, reading, or discussing a subject or topic that has nothing to do with your work.
Compare: Share time with a colleague, expert, or novice from another department, industry, or company.
Cultivate Learning Agility
Today, companies are primarily looking for people who are easily “trainable,” and intellectual curiosity is the foundation, representing a pragmatic competitive advantage.
Learning agility is a soft skill that cannot be copied, but only cultivated.
Ask yourself now: “When was the last time I did something for the first time?”
Steve Jobs said that "you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward.".
Intellectual curiosity is, in fact, the art of collecting these dots: experiences, readings, conversations, encounters, conflicts, negative feedback, and any other element that may only apparently seem useless.
Between innovation, creativity, and curiosity, learning agility represents, in fact, a revolutionary transversal skill.
Bibliographic references
De Meuse, K. P., Dai, G., & Hallenbeck, G. S. (2010). Learning agility: A construct whose time has come. Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research, 62(2), 119–130.
Gino, F. (2018). The business case for curiosity. Harvard Business Review, 96(5), 48–57.
Kashdan, T. B., Stiksma, M. C., Disabato, D. J., McKnight, P. E., Bekier, J., Kaji, J., & Lazarus, R. (2018). The five-dimensional curiosity scale: Capturing the bandwidth of curiosity and identifying distinct subgroups of people. Journal of Research in Personality, 73, 130–149.
Lombardo, M. M., & Eichinger, R. W. (2000). High potentials as high learners. Human Resource Management, 39(4), 321–329.
Von Stumm, S., Hell, B., & Chamorro-Premuzic, T. (2011). The hungry mind: Intellectual curiosity is the third pillar of academic performance. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 6(6), 574–588.