JIM FRAZIER/THEISPOT.COM FALL 2019 MIT SLOAN MANAGEMENT REVIEW 7
FRONTIERS
EXPLORING THE DIGITAL FUTURE OF MANAGEMENT
Avoiding the Pitfalls of
Customer Participation
10‘Just Enough’ Piracy
Can Be a Good Thing
13Why Teams Still
Need Leaders
15[TALENT]
Pioneering Approaches to Re-skilling
and Upskilling
Companies are starting to ramp up their employee development efforts
in exciting new ways.
BY LYNDA GRATTON
I
n the new world of work, we may not know for
sure which jobs will be destroyed and what will
be created, but one thing is clear: Everyone,
whatever their age, will at some point have to spend
time either re-skilling (learning new skills for a new
position) or upskilling (learning current tasks more
deeply). In every job, workers will have new tech-
nologies to learn and new personal relationships to
navigate as those roles fit and refit into a changing
economic landscape.
Embracing this idea requires a real sense of
agency on the part of individuals. Each of us needs
to be both motivated and prepared to put in the
effort toward making learning a lifetime priority.
That’s a good first step, but it will work only if
corporations step up to make it possible.
The challenge is that old-style notions of train-
ing are far too slow and relatively expensive. They’re
often classroom based and instructor led. They’re
usually focused only on current employees, ignoring
potential recruits.
Look around, though, and you’ll see experiments
and early pilots underway. Some companies are