Are You Ready To Go Back To School? I’m Serious

One of the most dangerous enemies of successful careers today is a university degree or an MBA.

Think I’m talking madness? Maybe. But Maybe not.

I am a huge believer in tertiary education. It teaches us many life and career skills beyond the course content. And of course, MBAs and degrees have a powerful role.

But here’s the problem: Many professionals rest on the laurels of a degree earned years ago. Their commitment to formal education is now over.

These days it’s all about ‘on the job’ training and fine tuning your skills in the trench warfare of your industry. That is definitely useful learning, but in my opinion, it’s not enough.

Here’s a much better idea to stay relevant and add value to your education:

COMMIT TO DOING A ‘NANO DEGREE’. EVERY. SINGLE. YEAR.

Sounds nuts? Well, let me explain. Now is the time for every ambitious professional to make a renewed commitment to education. It’s time for us all (yes, even you) to go back to school and to accept that education has to be a part of our lives for the rest of our careers.

We all know the pace of change is extremely fast, relentless and at the end of the day: inevitable. As a result, there is just no way our knowledge and relevance is not going to be compromised by innovation and newness. To counter this, we have to get brilliant at what Tony Robbins calls ‘the most important skill to master in this day and age…the ability to learn rapidly’.

A friend of mine, Ryan, is a brilliant entrepreneurial leader in the education sector and he talks about wanting to create a ‘Nano Degree’. It’s basically a never-ending degree and every year the professional commits to say two units of new learning on stuff just invented or that has evolved.

Who would be up for that? I know I raised my hand to that question.

Companies can commit to providing this degree to staff and it becomes part of their DNA.

“Don’t spend $30,000 on an MBA,” he says. “Rather, spend $2,000 a year for 15 years learning what you need to know now or at that moment in time.” Makes massive sense to me.

HERE’S AN EXAMPLE:

I am a leader in the communications industry and if I was to sign up for this ‘Nano Degree’, I’d be selecting these two units this year:

1. Virtual Reality
2. Facebook – its strategy, future, and implications

Those are the two burning issues I need to learn about rapidly to stay current in what I do. Oh, and maybe even a third never-ending unit on mobile.

Next year, who knows? What I need to learn then to stay current at the edge of my industry will become apparent to me but it hasn’t become a burning issue yet. Give it another 12 months and it will be screaming out to me.

Here’s the truth, if we don’t get cracking in keeping pace with new learning, we will be overtaken on our career road by those who are being brought up with the stuff we don’t know.

Change the game and commit yourself to your very own ‘Nano Degree’. The continual quest for education and new learning will keep your career thriving as long as you want it to.

Continuous learning in our careers is of uber importance! If you’re doing your CPA exam in the next couple of weeks, we wish you the best of luck. Looking for your next challenge and on-the-job learning? Have a peek at our latest jobs.