Esas palabras usó Max Wessel, codirector ejecutivo de Degreed, cuando habló en Degreed LENS 2025 para caracterizar la situación dinámica y estimulante que atraviesan las empresas en la actualidad.

En los últimos dos años hubo muchísimos cambios. Si bien la IA no es la primera tecnología que revoluciona el ámbito empresarial, ni será la última, el ritmo indiscutiblemente acelerado de los cambios que estamos viviendo da cuenta de algo nuevo. 

Hubo tres temáticas fundamentales que surgieron una y otra vez en LENS:

1. La IA llegó para quedarse y debe reemplazar tareas, no al personal.
2. Los directores deben adaptarse y ponerse a la altura de las circunstancias desempeñándose como orientadores y referentes.
3. Contar con programas de aprendizaje personalizados a gran escala es más fácil que nunca.

La ventaja de la IA para el aprendizaje

La IA llegó para quedarse y debe reemplazar tareas, no al personal.

Así como adoptaron las computadoras y los smartphones, los directores innovadores de las empresas que quieren seguir siendo competitivas evolucionan para adaptarse a la IA. Y, tal como sucedió con esos avances tecnológicos anteriores, aplicar la IA al desarrollo profesional de los empleados puede ser una ventaja enorme.

“En este momento estamos reformulando nuestros puestos ―opinó Nikki Helmer, directora de Productos de Degreed―. Estamos redefiniendo lo que significa trabajar en un mundo que prioriza la IA”.

_{Nikki Helmer, directora de Productos de Degreed}

El personal debe saber cómo usar la IA y, con un programa de aprendizaje eficaz, es posible garantizar que todos los empleados estén preparados para aplicarla a las tareas cotidianas.

“La IA afecta a toda la empresa, no solo a un área funcional” ―afirmó Lisa Tenorio, vicepresidenta sénior de Productos e Innovación de Harvard Business Publishing―. Todos los empleados, cualquiera sea su puesto, deben tener alguna noción de IA y seguir aprendiendo constantemente para estar siempre al tanto de cómo evoluciona la tecnología. Es decir, tanto los aprendices como los programas de aprendizaje se deben adaptar y mantener a la par de los cambios”.

_{Lisa Tenorio, vicepresidenta sénior de Productos e Innovación de Harvard Business Publishing}

No obstante, desde el punto de vista del área de RR. HH., es fundamental que esta transición a la IA no tenga como fin reemplazar a las personas, sino lograr que hagan su trabajo con más eficiencia.

“¿En cuáles casos las tecnologías como la IA pueden servir para que los empleados lleven a cabo sus tareas con más eficiencia y productividad? ―preguntó Melissa Matlins, jefa global de Soluciones de Personal de Pearson―. El tiempo que ahorren se puede aplicar a adquirir habilidades perdurables, como la comunicación o el trabajo en equipo, que siempre van a ser imprescindibles en todas las áreas”.

Ejercer el liderazgo para favorecer el aprendizaje con IA 

Los directores deben adaptarse y ponerse a la altura de las circunstancias desempeñándose como orientadores y referentes.

En nuestro próximo informe, “Cómo aprende el personal 2025 – IA generativa”, demostramos que la falta de orientación es uno de los principales factores por los cuales los trabajadores dudan en adquirir habilidades para la IA y se sienten inseguros al usarla. Esto quiere decir que los directores de las empresas deben darles más pautas a los empleados sobre cómo aprovechar la IA y experimentar con ella.

“Se tiene que hablar más de la IA como factor que modifica la trayectoria de los altos mandos, que eleva el nivel de exigencia para el liderazgo. No hay que tratarla como si fuera una tecnología mágica extraterrestre”, señaló Cassie Kozyrkov, directora ejecutiva de Kozyr y ex científica principal de decisiones de Google.

_{Cassie Kozyrkov, directora ejecutiva de Kozyr y ex científica principal de decisiones de Google}

El mundo que está surgiendo a partir de la IA es un territorio inexplorado, y a algunos directivos les va a costar entenderlo y más todavía lograr que el personal se adapte. Pero no tiene por qué ser un proceso abrumador. Vidya Krishnan, directora de Aprendizaje de Ericsson, les recordó a los asistentes que “los directores deben destacarse en tres aspectos: dar pautas claras, capacitar al personal y generar resultados”. Esto se aplica a todas las situaciones, ya sea que hablemos de habilidades, IA o cualquier dificultad que se presente en el futuro para las empresas.

De hecho, con la orientación justa, el upskilling sobre IA puede ser fácil para todos, comentó Siya Raj Purohit, directora de Comercialización de Productos Educativos de OpenAI. “Hay que procurar que todos empiecen a experimentar con la IA. No me parece que todo el mundo tenga que ser experto en el tema. El sector avanza a toda velocidad. Surgen muchísimas novedades todo el tiempo. No hay que obligar a los empleados a entender todas esas tendencias, porque en realidad no se aplican a sus actividades diarias. Lo que importa es su capacidad para hacer las preguntas correctas y darle la información adecuada a la IA, de modo que obtengan las respuestas que esperan. Y todos deben poder hacerlo”.

Aprendizaje personalizado a gran escala con IA

Contar con programas de aprendizaje personalizados a gran escala es más fácil que nunca.

Con la IA llega la posibilidad de personalizar el aprendizaje a una escala nunca vista para la humanidad. La IA es el problema y también la solución. 

“Me parece que las tutorías personalizadas siempre fueron el santo grial para el sector educativo. La idea es que si concretamos esto, habremos cumplido nuestro objetivo como sector. Y ahora lo logramos”, comentó Raj Purohit.

Lo mejor de todo es que los trabajadores quieren materiales personalizados. Nadie quiere perder tiempo con capacitaciones irrelevantes, sobre todo en un mundo donde ya estamos rodeados de otros contenidos gestionados especialmente para nosotros. 

“La ultrapersonalización es clave” ―señaló Ali Bebo, directora de Recursos Humanos de Pearson―. La gente quiere que la conozcan y la tengan en cuenta”.

Una nueva era de innovación para Degreed

Degreed posibilita la transformación del personal con nuevas funcionalidades en sus productos.

Para ayudar a tu empresa a mejorar los programas de aprendizaje con IA, los puestos de liderazgo y la personalización, anunciamos varias funciones nuevas para nuestros productos:

1. Degreed Maestro Studio: Prueba esta impresionante herramienta que te permite crear e implementar experiencias de aprendizaje personalizadas y con IA integrada, como coaches o simulaciones. 
2. Degreed Open Library (sin costo adicional): Obtén acceso a 500 itinerarios prediseñados y gestionados en detalle sobre los temas más solicitados, de modo que puedas depender menos de los costosos contenidos de proveedores externos gracias a materiales de capacitación que se actualizan automáticamente.
3. Degreed Maestro Services: Aprovecha un paquete de servicios pensado para que saques el máximo provecho de la IA y, al mismo tiempo, recortes tus gastos.
4. Colaboraciones de Degreed con Pearson y American Council on Education (ACE): Obtén datos sobre el mercado y valida las academias de aprendizaje para que a cada capacitación finalizada se le asignen créditos formales.

Estos anuncios sobre los productos y las colaboraciones marcan el inicio de una nueva era de innovación, una era en la que el aprendizaje personalizado y la cuantificación de las habilidades a gran escala generan los resultados comerciales positivos que necesitan los empleados y tu empresa para seguir avanzando.

Obtén más información.

Entérate de lo que se viene con Degreed. No te pierdas nuestra serie de webinars Degreed en acción en siete entregas y elige las charlas que quieras para saber más sobre nuestras innovaciones en materia de IA, informes sobre habilidades, automatizaciones, servicios profesionales de Degreed, academias de Degreed y mucho más.

The post Cómo ejercer el liderazgo en la era de la IA con aprendizaje personalizado a gran escala appeared first on Degreed.

Perhaps your organization celebrates tenacity like “Rocky.” Maybe “Speed” is the blockbuster comparison, because this ain’t no regular bus ride, right? Or it could be any James Bond flick, owing to all those clever inventions that help save the day.

Like many teams, yours is probably tasked with scripting a more innovative approach to L&D in 2022 — to improve remote learning, optimize platforms, increase adoption and more. And it all might be feeling a bit like “Moneyball,” the true story of a major league baseball club that embraced its own brand of innovation by analyzing data to boost performance.

Why innovation? And why now? In a world where forces like the Great Resignation continue to disrupt the economy, pressure to continually develop workers, fill skill gaps and make your company more resilient can seem relentless. It’s imperative to think strategically about how you can do more to support key business initiatives and grow revenue like a box office sensation.

Degreed LENS 2021 was a chance to explain our latest product innovations, announce the launch of Degreed Intelligence, and hold our annual flagship conference in person for the first time in two years. As we gathered this week in Los Angeles with Tinseltown as a backdrop, learning pros were challenged to greenlight their next big production. 

With presenter after presenter focused on a common theme — how to make L&D the hero of a meaningful adventure — Degreed CEO Dan Levin set the scene: “We live in a world of change. We live in a world of evolution. We live in a world where we all have to be lifetime learners if we’re going to succeed. And we live in a world where the classic education… will never be enough to sustain us through our careers.”

And with that, let’s roll. In this close-up, we’ll take a look at how to:

Make Learning a Business Imperative

Elevating the importance of L&D as a business enabler starts with understanding your company’s business objectives and asking a key question: what workforce skill gaps are getting in the way of success?

“And then, in those gaps, ‘Where is learning a solution?’” said Molly Nagler, CLO at PepsiCo. “I think learning professionals will increase their own credibility if they admit that learning is not an answer to every problem. Maybe you need to hire people. Maybe you need to acquire a new technology… Once you decide, then you can design to that.”

When learning is part of the solution, partnering with key stakeholders is important for guiding development toward the right priorities. To secure that support, Nagler recommends L&D frame learning as a platform for senior leaders’ agendas.

In addition, set goals and track progress. Success metrics are important, and it’s imperative to tie learning metrics to business metrics. In one example, learning teams at PepsiCo analyzed a development program that connected people during the pandemic. How? By measuring growth in their online networks. In another instance, L&D tracked the rate of one-on-one meetings between managers and workers to gauge the success of diversity and inclusion training focused on improving mentorship.

Don’t forget to share qualitative and anecdotal impacts too. Sometimes, they steal the show.

“For our big leadership programs,” Nagler said, “we always have participants meet with senior executives after the program to share what they learned and what the program meant to them. Those testimonials are just priceless. We talk so much about, you know, ‘follow the data.’ And that’s really important. But there’s no substituting for that personal story.”

Influence Through Storytelling

Stories open people to new ideas. They engage our senses, bring us closer, promote empathy, bring catharsis and attach us to a brand or culture, said storytelling expert and keynote speaker Nancy Duarte, CEO of Duarte, Inc. 

“Telling your story is going to be the first step in you changing the world,” she said. “You’ll have people follow you to this place in the future where you’re trying to drive positive change.”

From creating better learning content to presenting L&D success metrics, understanding how a well-told story is constructed can make you and your team more influential.

Stories often have three acts. In the first, we typically meet and like a flawed hero who has a goal, Duarte said. In the second act, an incident occurs. Hardship creates roadblocks, and we root for the hero to overcome obstacles. In the third act, the hero emerges transformed.

“There’s always a lesson,” Duarte said, adding this gives audience members permission to admit their own flaws. From there, they can overcome obstacles too.

A similar story structure applied to L&D analytics can be equally influential. To better communicate your data and findings, first describe your business problem or opportunity, Duarte said. Second, share whether the data supporting that is positive or negative. Third, make the action that needs to be taken crystal clear. 

“By structuring it in the shape of a story, your decision will be made quicker. It’ll move your decision making from ‘Let me think about it’ to ‘Let’s do something about it.’”

Urging L&D leaders to think like story-telling marketers, keynote speaker and marketing consultant Neil Bedwell, Partner at LOCAL, said workers want to belong and feel valued. Creating positive narratives about your company, he said, can sway people toward positive employee experiences that in turn drive successful customer experiences. “Your employees are an audience worth winning.”

Embrace Experiential Learning

You’ve got a choice. The red pill perpetuates the status quo. The blue pill brings change, a chance to accelerate skill growth and give your people new capabilities the world needs.

If you opt for the latter, understand people learn by practicing — and that experiential learning can create the right conditions for applying new knowledge on the job. You can enable it by connecting workers to stretch assignments, gigs, mentorships and more based on their skill-building goals. An online opportunity marketplace can help. And remember: experiential learning doesn’t need to lead to promotions. The growth can be lateral and incremental.

For L&D to solve the problems of tomorrow, it needs workers to be confident in skill building — and experiential learning can instill that determination by engaging people and their sense of belonging while simultaneously supporting business imperatives, said Haylee Metzner, Senior Human Resources Programs Specialist at Synopsys.

Like PepsiCo, Synopsis L&D accounts for corporate strategy, using company objectives reaching one, two, three years into the future as a starting point for determining how experiential learning can help advance the organization.

These days, more and more of those learning experiences happen online. 

“Recently, I partnered with our applications engineering group,” Metzner said. “Prior to the pandemic, they would bring everybody globally to one city, one space, one hotel, eight hours a day, five days for a week to upskill on our new products.

“We had to look for alternative ways to create those experiences,” she said, adding technology has played a big role and opened opportunities to a wider audience. 

“These would have been experiences that only a small group or maybe a small cohort would have had access to,” Metzner said. “But now… we’re able to open those opportunities to others within the organization and be more inclusive, right? To drive home that belonging.”

Use Skill Data for Good

Embracing analytics can change how your learning team thinks about maximizing its investments. It’s an especially logical next step if you have established L&D programs.

“Using skill data to improve our organizations isn’t just a pipe dream,” said Isabel Sapriel, Director of Embedded Product at Visier, a Degreed partner. “If we do this right, we can really transform L&D from a cost center to a true driver of revenue.”

Skill data is the measurement of what your people can do. One example is data on how people self rate their current capabilities. Another example is the skills they’ve identified as those they’d like to learn.

To use skill data, start by understanding your company’s goals and priorities then consider the capabilities it needs to achieve them, Sapriel said. “Apply skill analytics to say, ‘What are the skills I have in my organization today? How is that similar or different from what I need in the future? And how can I think about filling those gaps strategically?’”

This leads to more questions: Should you build needed skills in house? Hire new people? How far will each approach get you? How long would each take? How much will it cost?

With those questions answered, “then we can start applying this across the employee lifecycle to see what interventions we need at each stage — to make sure we’re implementing this cohesively.”

Insights gleaned from skill data can inform things like future job descriptions and candidate interview questions, Sapriel said. “It could be unstructured learning. It could be growth opportunities or stretch assignments. We can really think creatively about how we get this done.”

Reimagine Your L&D Team

Keynote speaker and business advisor Stedman Graham urged attendees to be the best leaders they can be.

“You have a chance to transform people’s lives based on the work you do every single day,” said the Chairman and CEO of S. Graham and Associates.

How you help your learning group do that is largely a question of investment. Investment in technology, internal marketing, design, measurement, your L&D workforce as a whole and its relationships, said Holly Travis, L&D Strategy and Enablement Director at Intel.

To get it right, it’s important to be agile and ask questions.

At Intel, L&D tech investments start with trials of numerous new solutions at a small scale, Travis said. “This allows us to … fail, learn fast, move toward the things that are really successful and make those investments richer.”

To market learning to workers, Intel L&D often explores new channels. Leaders there ask: How do we bring people along? How do we alert them to opportunities? How do we let them know learning in the flow of life is how you keep developing as an adult?

Investments in the L&D design team are increasingly dictated by how much content is built versus bought in addition to the realities of creating and managing learning remotely.

Measurement brings its own challenges, Travis said. “How do we connect it to our HR data to drive insights that tell us how learning is helping the bottom line?”

Overall spend on the L&D workforce is largely about skill set acquisition — through training and hiring.

“And then finally,” Travis said, “we’re looking at ‘How do we create business unit relationships?’ Because our goal is to move from softer skills at the enterprise level to more hard skills. We’re going to be hiring up to 30,000 new engineers at Intel over the next couple of years. We need to upskill them technically… We need to be really creating great relationships with our business unit partners, who are those subject matter experts, so we can pair their expertise with our learning expertise.”

That’s a Wrap

As your unique 2022 L&D plot line goes from good to epic, recall the words of our closing keynote speaker Sebastian Terry, Founder of 100things, who emphasized that being passionate and believing in what you do can make a huge difference in what you’re able to accomplish.

“We become infinitely more creative, more motivated, more resilient, more collaborative,” he said. “We become unstoppable.”

If you missed Degreed LENS, you still have a chance to catch its best scenes. We’ll be writing more about its compelling sessions in the weeks ahead. And keep an eye out for session recordings available on Degreed on Demand soon.

Did LENS help you get your groove back? Keep rockin’ out to our California-themed conference playlist: 

To learn more about Degreed, contact us for a demo today.

The post Lights, Camera, L&D: Innovating in 2022 appeared first on Degreed.

But more than anything, our flagship virtual conference on Wednesday was an opportunity for dialogue. 

We welcomed more than 11,000 people from 133 countries on our event platform. And with so many insightful business leaders on hand — including keynote speakers Sir Richard Branson, founder of the Virgin Group, and Adam Grant, author and organizational psychologist — people came with questions, ideas, and an energy that lit up the (virtual) room.

If you missed LENS Lite, it’s okay. We’ll be writing more about its compelling sessions in the weeks ahead. Sessions like the one led by Leena Nair, CHRO at Unilever, who spoke about improving your people’s experiences and said: “Investing in learning is about creating a better you, building a better business, and ensuring a better world.”

If you want to watch all the sessions for yourself, you can find all the video content at our On Demand page.

For now, let’s explore some of our favorite questions (and answers) of the day — takeaways from a wide range of participants that we hope you can apply to your unique strategy.

1. Given full authority and unlimited resources, how would you change education in the world?

This first question went to Branson, who said he’d like to see more companies de-emphasize academic credentials in recruiting.

“One of the first things I would do is what we’ve done at the Virgin Group, which is to do our interviews based on the individual and their particular skill set, their character,” he said.

Education needs to be relevant. If you’re going to have formal education, make sure it’s grounded in reality. Talk about Bitcoin. Talk about what’s going on under the oceans, Branson said, urging people to reimagine learning.

2. What advice do you have for people who aren’t a fit for current models of education but want to do great things?

Let life educate you, Branson said. He described how he and his team bootstrapped their early business endeavors and grew Virgin to what it is today, echoing themes from his most recent book, Finding My Virginity.

At the age of 16, “I dropped out because I was dyslexic and found conventional schooling really, really tough. I wasn’t enjoying it. It just seemed to be a waste of time. I dropped out to start a magazine to try to bring about change… The magazine became my education.

“That education was very, very real — and worked.”

3. What are some strategies for building a strong learning culture?

Grant fielded this one. In his latest book, Think Again, he challenges all of us to open our minds and reconsider our assumptions. Building a learning culture, he said, requires a similar mindset.

“The starting point for me from an individual perspective is to recognize that every single person you meet knows more than you do about something. Your first task is to say, ‘Even if I’m more senior than this person and experienced… they have expertise that I don’t.’ I want to hone in on that as quickly as possible and then try to soak up some of their knowledge.”

Modeling that curiosity, Grant said, becomes contagious.

At the organizational level, “One of the things that stands in the way is best practices,” he said. “I get what you’re trying to do when you create a best practice. You’re aiming for a repeatable system that is going to maintain excellence of execution. The danger of best practices, though, is they create an illusion that you’ve reached an endpoint.”

Instead, aim for better practices, Grant said. “What’s ‘best’ today may actually be inefficient or counterproductive tomorrow. And we should keep searching.” 

4. Does Ford Motor Company have any advice for people at the beginning of a learning experience technology journey?

At Ford, workforce development is built on three pillars:

• Learning is a collaborative responsibility among equals
• Learning is a human-centered, growth-oriented, everyday experience 
• Ford invests in learning that matters most to company and career 

When you’re investing in a new technology, create a strong business case and secure significant leadership support, said Dr. Marsha Parker, Director of Learning Services & Infrastructure.

When she proposed Degreed at Ford, Parker highlighted the gap between the company’s existing learning technologies and the needs of its workforce.

“To build the business case, you really need to focus on the learner,” she said. “What can you build to include your [learners’] skills but also demonstrate business value?”

If learning isn’t aligned with the business, making change is always an uphill battle.

5. Any tips from Signify for launching a learning platform to multiple countries?

Signify takes a balanced approach, said Hans Ramaker, Senior Director of Learning Innovation and Technology: “No countries are exactly the same. Some countries want certificates. Some don’t. Don’t treat implementation the same in all countries. The needs are different.”

6. What’s some advice from BAT for someone with a small team taking on a big project?

To help BAT (British American Tobacco) get the most from Degreed, its learning team of only two people embraced the “three Cs” of marketing: creativity, community, and communications.

Among other tactics, they partnered with corporate comms and used guerilla marketing that drove adoption, said Amritha Murali, Global Digital Learning Innovations Lead. In one such project, she learned how to create a promo video inspired by an engaging Apple ad to tease the launch of the BAT learning platform.

“It resonated with a lot of people,” Murali said, encouraging learning leaders to get inspired by work they see every day, particularly in the marketing space, and to reinterpret those ideas.

Her biggest piece of advice? “Speak to a lot of people. There are a lot of people who can guide you in the right ways to get you the information you need. . . You don’t need to reinvent the wheel.”

7. How did FICO and Whirlpool overcome fears that worker skill data won’t be used for good?

FICO intentionally decoupled skills from performance, said Chrissy Chamberlain, Senior Director of Digital Learning. 

“We keep skill data confidential between the person and their leadership chain,” she said, adding the company celebrates progress made over time, and emphasizes that people should feel good about growing. 

At Whirlpool, the philosophy is similar, said Rayssa Medeiros, Corporate Learning & Development Sr. Manager. “We emphasize that the main objective of this process and experience is learning and development and growth… It’s not around the measurement itself, but to inform learning experiences.”

8. Does Citigroup have a standard for how many skills to focus on when mapping skills to roles?

At Citi, L&D is committed to being more skills driven — to increase agility and efficiency. And yet leaders understand that the company’s shift from skills to roles would never happen overnight. It takes alignment and commitment across the organization, said Chris Funk, SVP of Talent & Performance Platforms.

For skill mapping, there’s no right number to focus on, Funk said. “Some initiatives are very clear cut, and you can align three or four or five target skills to them. When you start thinking about roles, and the variability of work within a single role, it’s hard to put a limit on it. You can always identify the top 10 or the top 15, but that doesn’t mean you eliminate the bottom 30 or 40.”

9. How did Novo Nordisk design its data ecosystem?

Integration and anonymity were key, said Derek Mitchell, Global Performance Data Lead.

“Our ecosystem is very simple. . . We have Alteryx sitting in the middle, then we have Degreed and lots of other data systems that anonymize the data and then spit it out to Power BI. The anonymization is very important because we allow anyone in the organization to go in and look at the data.”

10. How do learning leaders at Tata Communications partner with others to prioritize learning success?

Executive alignment has been critical — dating to the start of the company’s digital transformation journey nearly five years ago, said Ina Bajwa, Sr. Director and Global Head of Learning, Organisation & Leadership Development. 

“Our CHRO led the conversations with our top team members, to ask them what are the skills they need for themselves and their teams to be successful in the near term. And very surprisingly, we did not get very definitive answers,” Bajwa said. “And that actually led us to then start a dialogue across the organization with employees.”

That dialogue reiterated the importance of learning, reinforcing the likelihood that people’s jobs would change drastically over the next three to five years — and that the onus was on them to learn what they needed to stay employable. This process then led to leadership alignment.

Fast forward to 2019, when the company still had disparate learning solutions and also a new CEO. Upskilling and reskilling had gained speed and scale. A more unified learning solution was needed, and again the executive team quickly aligned — this time around adding Degreed to the ecosystem.

11. At CVS, what’s your perspective on mobility?

Mobility is a huge and hot topic that raises important questions, said Ted Fleming, Head of Talent Development.

Among those questions: How do you foster talent mobility? How do you move people around?

The answer isn’t mobility for mobility’s sake; rather, it’s applying skills in different situations to gain new experiences, Fleming said. It’s, “How do we give people a diverse set of experiences, so that they have nuance in their skills?

“That’s really what we are looking for.” 

Want more great LENS Lite insights? You can find all the presenters mentioned above and more on our On Demand page. And look out for announcements regarding our next LENS conference in Los Angeles, California, November 2021! 

The post Our Favorite Questions from Degreed LENS Lite 2021 appeared first on Degreed.

I originally wrote those words while recalling the 2011 fire that destroyed the Great House on Necker Island, my family’s Caribbean island home, which is part of the Virgin Limited Edition portfolio of luxury properties. As I recounted in my most recent book, Finding My Virginity, hurricane-fanned flames sparked by a rooftop lightning strike advanced on my closest friends and family members as they slept inside.

Thankfully, everyone escaped and survived. As we gathered in shock, I drew comfort from a life lesson that once again was crystal clear: Things aren’t important. People are.

It’s no secret that I’m always learning. I view life as a big adventure. I’m continually looking for new things to try and challenges to overcome. Success inspires me, but lessons drawn from failures are what make successes possible. The lifelong learning mindset has helped me tremendously since I started out in business more than 50 years ago after dropping out of school at age 15.

In business, adversity is guaranteed. Like a fire, problems come unexpectedly. You can’t douse every threat, but there’s a lot you can do to stay prepared for the uncertain future.

Helping your people build skills and providing them with new career opportunities helps your organization take on tomorrow. That’s the key insight running through this year’s Degreed LENS Lite virtual conference on Wednesday, May 5th. I’m delighted to be the opening keynote speaker and thrilled to be joined by closing keynote speaker Adam Grant, organizational psychologist and bestselling author, with whom I’ve had several enlightening conversations about the future of education.

If you’re a business, talent, HR, or learning leader, I hope you’ll join me and the innovative people at Degreed as well as thousands of your industry peers at LENS Lite. I look forward to exploring how the most durable and effective companies are investing where it matters most — in their people.

Like Degreed, I view education as fluid and flexible. At the Virgin Group, we’re always building on individuals’ needs and talents. Time and again, I’ve seen workplace upskilling opportunities stimulate, nourish, and celebrate potential. As I once said, and is often repeated across the talent and learning community: “Train people well enough so they can leave. Treat them well enough so they don’t want to.”

In today’s pandemic-affected world of work, the upskilling need is clear.

The people on your team can always learn something new and helpful, no matter where they are in their careers. Wherever your business needs to go, the future is yours to create.

Indeed, no matter what happens you can learn from it — and create something really positive.

What happened after the Great House burned is all the proof I’ve needed.

Less than six months after the fire, an amazing thing happened. My daughter Holly got married in a beautiful ceremony right there amid the ruins.

And today, the Great House stands again.

See Sir Richard Branson’s full presentation at Degreed LENS Lite, May 5. Register here!

The post Explore Leadership & Personal Reinvention at Degreed LENS Lite appeared first on Degreed.