Non-working skills and the need to catch up (short story)

We often think about abilities we acquire long we can be useful lifetime. Unfortunately it is not.

I have been talking a lot about the importance of context. The context is to confirm whether these abilities they are valid or should be updated.

If you study engineering construction and a crisis ensues as there was in 2008 in many countries, possibly this crisis drag you. Unless you have abilities you allow additional output, a plane B.

I will bring a short story (anonymous again) that dramatized the need to adapt well:

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The right place
Our skills and competencies are useful in the right place and time
Acquire new skills, a must contest SXXI
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The right place

A mother and baby camel chatting under a tree.

Baby camel asked: “Mother, why camels have humps?”

Camel mother considered it and said,: “We are desert animals, so we need the humps to store water and thus to survive with very little reserve”.

Baby camel thought for a moment and said,: “Agree… Why are our legs long and our feet rounded?”

Mom replied: “They are walking through the desert”.

The baby stopped. After a while, the camel asked: “Why our eyelashes are so long? Sometimes in my way”.

Mom answered: “Those long and thick eyelashes protect your eyes from the desert sand when the wind blows.

The baby thought and thought. And he answered: “I see. So the hump is to store water when we are in the desert, the legs are for walking through the desert and these eyelashes protect my eyes from the desert. So what do we do in a zoo?”

Our skills and competencies are useful in the right place and time

That's right. Have a Ferrari in the Amazon rainforest is as useless as the hump camel at the zoo, whose utility is only photographic. Of course, our abilities not expire. Our pair of camels could be "liberated" by an environmental group and returned to the desert. Maybe they need to practice then is another skill: that of using a abilities "Rusty". Fortunately, instinct is powerful.

Acquire new skills, a must contest SXXI

My colleague Eva Collado Durán often speaks of "permanent beta status" as one of the professional skills of the XXI century. Permanent beta status means not to drop your elbows when studying, to catch up.

A commercial director is obliged to permanently trained in new ways of approaching customers, new sales channels, social selling… If a crisis comes, the company will always consider those professionals who master these new abilities.

Today we have many resources to not stay "rusty". Among them, the books, the MOOC universities, business courses, workshops, educational websites, postgraduates, Masters (many of them with the ease of being online).

If you are like our camels at the zoo, think what new skills you can develop to not stay as a mere object of exposure.

Camels photo by Paul Michaels NZ on Shutterstock.com

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About me Guillem Recolons

Convinced that everything leaves a mark, I help companies to better connect with their stakeholders through personal branding programs (personal brand management) and employee advocacy (internal brand ambassadors programs).

Partner at Integra Personal Branding and Soymimarca, I also collaborate with Ponte en Valor, Brandergizers, MoreThanLaw, Noema Consulting, AdQualis Human Results and Quifer Consultores.

As lecturer, participated in the Graduate Social Media of UPF and UVic, in various programs at IESE and ISDI, among other. Advertising man, Master en Marketing. Grade student of Humanities.

My DNA comes from advertising 20 years in agencies: BBDO, J.W.T., Bassat Ogilvy, Saatchi & Saatchi, Altraforma and TVLowCost among others.

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