Was just having a conversation on education and skills.
The current system of education is quite new. For a large part of our existence, we have been working on skills, those that passed down for generations.
Each generation added more to the mix thus resulting in an accumulation of skills over time. A 5th generation goldsmith would be much better than a 1st or2nd generation goldsmith, and this fact is still advertised when it comes to many current skills.
Things may be different in the technology space, but here too skills matter first. One who can learn new skills, and more importantly, unlearn older methods, is the one who progresses faster. This is true in any field.
And so focus on building skills. Learn as much as you can – short-term skills that can add to your arsenal. Learning is never wasted!
I come from a time when one had to sit with a DTP (Desk Top Publishing) specialist to layout a magazine. Or even a simple brochure for that matter. Today, I log on to Canva for free and do it on my own.
What was exotic earlier, is mainstream today. And this trajectory is only going to get steeper. Innovative technologies are transforming our lives, but how many of us are keeping up with it?
An often-heard excuse is – I don’t understand technology. Or let me leave it to the experts. Fair enough, if you are looking at advanced tasks. But basics?
Especially when you run your own business. The smaller and more niche the business, the larger the need to learn and innovate. And economies are built by small businesses that grow bigger.
By bigger, I don’t mean Mukesh Ambani type of big – those are one in a million, and a lot of factors go into building such conglomerates. I mean a 2-3 person setup becoming an 8-10 member setup.
At these levels, you don’t have much leeway – be it cash or resources. You have a do a lot yourself, and it actually saves you a lot of money, and you end up doing it better when you know what it is all about.
Take CRM for instance. People either go with Excel, or wonder if they need Salesforce. Try Hubspot instead – it’s free, flexible and good enough for small businesses. Hubspot Academy has everything you need to know about CRM and digital marketing, and these too are free courses.
Canva is free. Zapier is free. There are a lot of tools that use the freemium model, and you can stay in the “free” bit for quite a lot of time.
The key is to keep learning, and as a consequence, innovating.
And why am I speaking of this today? Good question.
We are currently hiring, and finding it difficult to locate the right resource. And so I was thinking on how I can get the message across to as many “relevant” candidates as possible, without having to sift through hundreds of resumes and end up with very few that fit the bill.
So I used technology – a combination of our digital backend and Canva. But how do I link the two? How would a candidate be able to reach the link I wanted him to be on, in order to apply? Well, as you have it, Canva has an option of inserting a QR code that can lead you to a website, if you scan it. Simple, but if I wasn’t inquisitive, I would not have found it.
Innovation. A necessity begets it. But learning prepares you for it.
As Ted Lasso says in Season 1 – Be curious, not judgmental.
See you tomorrow!