{"id":60968,"date":"2019-10-24T14:24:31","date_gmt":"2019-10-24T14:24:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/explore.local\/2019\/10\/24\/skills-lifecycle-part-4-developing-skills\/"},"modified":"2025-04-04T19:26:05","modified_gmt":"2025-04-04T19:26:05","slug":"skills-lifecycle-part-4-developing-skills","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/degreed.com\/experience\/fr\/blog\/skills-lifecycle-part-4-developing-skills\/","title":{"rendered":"Skills Lifecycle Part 4: Skill Development"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

You\u2019ve heard of The Beatles, right? The first iconic boy band from Liverpool who crafted lyrics, legacy, and legend in the 1960s. But they didn\u2019t get there overnight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Malcolm Gladwell in his book Outliers: The Story of Success, <\/a>features the story of The Beatles as one of the proof points of his assertion that mastery is achieved through the dedication of 10,000 hours of effort. In the case of The Beatles, that mastery was achieved in part from trips to Hamburg playing an estimated 1,200 performances before most had considered beetles<\/em> to be anything other than bugs. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But before you clear your calendar until 2025 to master the bass guitar, let\u2019s explore how we can effectively develop our skills \u2014 and those of our workforce \u2014 more efficiently. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We\u2019ve explored the first three stages of the Skills Lifecycle in previous posts below, with this final installment covering development. This Lifecycle is comprised of a fabulous foursome of steps:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

  1. Alignment<\/a><\/li>
  2. Skill Benchmarking<\/a><\/li>
  3. Content Curation<\/a><\/li>
  4. Skill Development<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    Imagine<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

    Some of you reading this will be in roles dedicated to developing others, but all of us should have some awareness of development, as we know technologies and jobs will change radically over the next decade.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    The 2018 Future of Jobs Report<\/a> predicts that by 2022, 75 million jobs will be displaced. However, these technological advances will also create 133 million new positions, which will work largely with machines and algorithms. To meet the requirements of these new roles, the report predicts that at least 54% of employees will need reskilling and upskilling<\/a> by 2022.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \"The<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

    Yesterday<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

    With all that change, how can we effectively build skills in ourselves and others? Traditionally, L&D programs took cues from the school systems<\/a> and created classroom courses. Many studies (and honestly, just a bit of reflection on your own personal experience with learning that way) can tell us we can\u2019t rely solely on the classroom for development. Our most recent research<\/a> on how the workforce learns today suggests that traditional methods used in corporate learning are not working for a variety of reasons \u2014 namely, they\u2019ve been designed for scale rather than impact. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Come Together<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

    Our same 2019 report<\/a>, done in partnership with Harvard Business Publishing Corporate Learning, revealed that while classroom training remains essential to learning strategies, employees are far more frequently developing skills on their own. A progressive learning strategy should have the ability to harness these efforts, monitor them, and allow them to indicate where to invest more L&D resources. The first step to developing a progressive L&D strategy is to shift the focus to skills.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    To make the shift from learning<\/em> to skilling<\/em>, we need to start with a few premises about skill development:<\/p>\n\n\n\n