Continuous Learning for White-collar Professionals
In our highly competitive and fast-paced work environment, continuous learning is no longer perceived as extra miles working professionals are going but rather an expected practice. I have seen friends and colleagues collect certifications and accreditation like scorecard to their professional achievement. Do the certifications and accreditations look impressive? Sure they do! On the other hand, I also have friends and colleagues who did not complete tertiary education and do not seem to be bothered. Are they doing good with their lives? Absolutely!
I completed my master’s degree a few months ago. While I was still enjoying the honeymoon period of not needing to work on my thesis nor courseworks, some of my friends in the same course have started their next level of education in PhD. What? Is arriving to PhD the ultimate goal for everyone who aims to excel? What’s next after PhD? Another PhD?
That really got me thinking the purpose of education. Right after high school, the reason we went to university or college is to earn a Diploma or Degree as an entry ticket to the professional job market. Now that we have a job, what is the purpose of continuously learning more?
The purpose of continuously educating ourselves should not only be driven by our profession although that can be a big motivator. Instead, we should consider adopting an holistic approach of using continuous learning to make greater impact to our life and the lives around us. While learning new skills and knowledge, we should aim to create Self Awareness for ourselves. We will no longer work in reactive or pre-conditioned manner. The awareness will manifest into Self Management to help us to manage the outputs and outcomes of our work. Social Awareness will emerge as a result of the good works that we have done when colleagues take notice of the quality of our works. Eventually, our works will lead to positive Social Influence within our organization and beyond.
Continuous learning does not limit to knowledge and skills we can learn from formal institutes. Let’s take a look at what are the continuous learning options for working professionals.
Tertiary Education
For working professionals, a master’s degree is often seen as the next stage of serious education. Depending on the program and mode of study, it requires approximately 2 years of commitment in completing a master degree. You will often need to attend classes, work on courseworks, presentations, participation in discussions and exams. Master’s degree programs usually get government accreditation and are recognized globally. For example, every organization in the world has a common understanding on what a Master of Business Administration (MBA), Masters of Finance (MoF) or Master of Computer Science (MCS) is about.
Master degree is usually not essential but a nice to have addition for many working professionals. For a lot of the master degree programs, you will see students who do not necessarily have the same bachelor degree background. In fact, if you see a student who completed a Bachelor of Business Administration to continue Master of Business Administration, the student will not learn too many new knowledge in the master program. That is by design to allow professionals from other domains to learn about another domain with reasonable exposure yet does not get too in-depth. For example, you will see technical professionals (doctor, engineer, lawyer, etc) to enrol into an MBA program when they take up management role. Another situation is when someone switches job to a different industry. I have a colleague who had a background in chemical engineering but did a Master of IT Management when he took up a managerial role in a tech company.
With a few exceptions, the knowledge that you acquire from master degree program is neither ground breaking nor specialized. Most of the time, you can learn the knowledge through books or even YouTube channels if you have the discipline. What is unique in a master degree program is you will be introduced to various theories in the industry in a structured manner and practice critical thinking while applying the theories. Doing case studies and discussions in class are very common to gain industry insight. Another value is to introduce you to the research process in the form of writing thesis in an academic approach which will prepare you for PhD program. The value of master degree program does not come in the form of knowledge you learn in the course but the formal accreditation you will receive by completing the course syllabus. Do not expect to be the person who know a lot about a domain after completing a master degree program. In fact, the opposite of it is true, know a little about a lot, which actually sound rather misleading with the recognition of master.
Personally, I took up an MBA program because studying in a business school has always been my interest after writing codes for more than 10 years as a software developer. Back then, it always amazed me when I was listening to presentation from the senior management or executives on the financial numbers, organization structure design and business strategy. I had a deep admiration that I wished I could do that myself one day. Upon completing the MBA program, it certainly empowered me with business management insights and the ability to make and execute business centric decisions from different perspective.
Professional Courses
There are various industry specific professional courses which are tactical oriented. It empowers you to be effective in tasks execution with very focused and specialized skillset. The course duration can varies from a few days to a few months.
Professional courses are great for entry to mid level professionals to get up to speed and to excel in particular role. A professional course will often help an individual to transition from someone who performs a reasonably okay job to expert level execution. For example, a software engineer who have gone through a 3-year computer science degree program in the university now works for a tech company and is assigned to build software using Microsoft stack of technology (C#.NET, Visual Studio, Azure DevOps, Azure cloud, etc). The engineer likely can complete the work assigned to him with an acceptable level of effectiveness. However, in order to harness the best and the most out of Microsoft technology stack, certification courses like Microsoft Azure Architect Technologies or Developing ASP.NET MVC Web Applications will certainly help the engineer to widen his exposure and deepen his skillset in implementation.
Many professional courses focus on technical domains. There are also non-technical professional courses that are popular among mid to senior level professionals. The non-technical professional courses focus slightly less on tactical aspects and more on the fundamental comprehension of particular ideology, which tend to evolve less frequently compared to technical courses. For example, project management has various flavours. There are the gold standards such as Project Management Professional (PMP), business oriented courses such as CompTIA Project+ or software development specific such as Certified Scrum Master. All roads lead to Rome. There is no right or wrong professional courses in this aspect but it is matter of how suitable a course is given the context you are in. Those who takes the effort to study the course and complete the certification exams will certainly gain better insight on the fundamental ideology compared to those who read a couple of article and do what others are doing for the sake of doing (because that is what everyone else is doing) without the deeper level of comprehension.
Personally, I have attended many job related professional courses over the last 10 years. Some at my own expense but mostly the organizations I was attached with sponsored. I never had an experience where I think I did not learn something profoundly new. The professional courses helped me tremendously preparing me with additional edges at my career. For example, the insight from Scrum Master certification that I did many years ago is still playing a role in helping me tackling Engineering department challenges today. The value of professional courses are great. However, if the employer or manager you are working with do not share the same view on the benefits of professional course, it almost means nothing to them. But, it is still an option to seriously consider if you are aiming to stand out from the crowd to perform at world-class level.
Soft Skill Training
Soft skills training focuses on generic skillset that is very transferable no matter what role you are playing in your career. The scope is often more narrowed compare to professional courses but the skill is often seen as less professional but nevertheless are beneficial.
Organizations with strong human resource department and matured policies often organize such training for employees from time to time targeted at different levels. These skills are nice to have in smoothing the rough edges but usually is not deal breaking in performing the job effectively. Examples of soft skill training include English speaking and writing, time management, presentation, coaching and so on. Fun fact about such skill is that it does not really matter. For example, many non-native English speakers feel insecure about their accent when speaking with or presenting to native English speakers. The reality is, native English speakers do not usually judge them for their accent. It is more important to excel at the core competency. An economist is judged by the analysis he performs on his charts and a software engineer is judged by the quality of his technical design and implementation. It is ok to speak with an accent. People do not judge our soft skill as much as we think they do.
Personally, I have a bit of love-hate impression for soft skill training. I love it because it is casual, fun, few days break from work and sometimes I was even sent overseas for such training like a mini vacation. Sometimes, I dislike it because the time was not well spent. The trainers are sometimes amateur themselves and I didn’t feel like I learn as much compare to other channels. Nevertheless, it is still a good refresher from time to time to brush up soft skills and sometimes the trainers are some really awesome people to hang out with.
Online Learning Portal
Online learning portal such as Coursera, Udemy, LinkedIn Learning, Pluralsight have certainly gained more popularity over the last 5 years. They started off as casual learning portals but have grown into credible platforms that deliver very high quality content. Today, online learning portals are no longer only for casual and non-essential knowledge. We can even attend professional certification courses to completing a master degree program from world-renowned universities.
Fuelled by Covid-19 pandemic, online learning portal gained even more popularity among the tech savvy professionals. Before the pandemic started, for short courses students were required to attend 3–5 day of physical classroom sessions. Students are required to go universities to attend physical classes for the program they enrolled into. Since the pandemic started, almost every teaching delivery has moved online. The ironic part is although the delivery mode gone online, the training cost and tuition fees remain the same and the quality of the instructors and content remain the same. Inevitably, that will get the students to consider going into online learning portals for much higher quality teaching materials, world class instructors and sometimes even at a fraction of the cost. It makes so much sense to go to online learning portals instead of the local training provider.
Personally, I love online learning portal such as Udemy and LinkedIn Learning for learning both technical, management and leadership topics. Recently, I have enrolled myself into a Diploma in Modern Applied Psychology from an academy in Scotland and another Financial Markets course from Yale University. This will not be possible without such online learning portal. The part I enjoy the most is it allows very flexible learning schedule. I will no longer need to clear my weekend schedule just so that I can travel to and sit in the university to attend lectures like I had to during my MBA program. The quality of the lectures has been impressive. The online learning portal business model is genius. It allows the training providers to reach out to the globalized market and allows the students to select almost every available course at the comfort of their home.
Other Options
Obviously the above are not the only options for white-collar professionals to learn. Some prefer to read a book while some prefer to attend online conferences. There is simply no right or wrong approach. The important approach is to find out what suits you the best. For example, I found myself get bored quickly when reading a physical book but I enjoy listening to audio books while running. Another example is while I watch lecture videos, my mind often start wandering and lose focus but when I change the play speed to 1.5x or 2.0x faster, my mind was forced to pay full attention and focus at the what the instructor is saying. Interesting little tricks. I suggest you to explore what works best for you.
Summary
The days of acquiring one skill and hang on to it for the rest of our career is long gone. It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent; it is the one most adaptable to change. We need to adapt our knowledge and skillset as the society and industry develops. We are either growing or dying in our career. Unfortunately there is no such thing as stagnation. Keep moving no matter how small the steps are. I hope you will have fun in your journey to continuous learning.
