Re-skilling isn't about your current skillset being obsolete, or at risk of being overtaken by developments in the business sphere.
Re-skilling is the "fourth R" in the sustainability focus cycle, and, increasingly, that sustainability cycle is being seen not as "second best", or "something to consider for some quirky retro content", but as central to personal resilience and business success.
Reduce means identifying what's necessary, important, and the cause, not just a symptom.
At The Productive Pessimist Ltd, we focus on helping you reduce your problems, down to the one issue which is actually your barrier.
We work with you to reduce the distractions to your strategic focus, and reduce the number of steps from where you are now to where you want to be.
Reuse prompts you to hold a 'stock' of approaches, skills, and mindsets which can be applied to a diverse range of challenges and opportunities.
For example:
communication is a skill which can be applied to marketing, advocacy, leadership, teaching, writing, designing, landscaping, architecture, fundraising, counselling, and networking in the business sphere, whilst also being an effective personal tool for mindfulness, journalling, boundary-setting, performance improvement, and goal setting.
agile thinking is a mindset which helps you develop comfort and confidence with technology, gives you the confidence to pursue 'stretch' opportunities, navigate new cultures, societal shifts, and alterations in interpersonal dynamics, as well as making you a good coach, therapist, and problem solver. Agile thinking is also the foundation of resilience and determination.
mind-mapping is an approach which can be used to direct your thinking in the face of challenges ranging from career development to interior design.
Recycling centres on recognising where you can save effort and time by doing something well enough that it can be 'recycled' for future demands. For example, creating a cover letter with just enough tailoring means you can use the framework for every role that requests a cover letter, and just alter the tailored elements, rather than having to write an entire letter from scratch.
If you create your strategic plan with sufficient focus, the bones will hold up each future strategic plan, with just the elements, or 'skin', needing to be revised - freeing up time to actually put the plan into action, and minimising the time you and your team are drawn away from their core points of focus.
Reskilling isn't about forgetting your current and previous skills. It's about identifying related skills which can bridge the place you are now to emerging market demands.
For example, the American administration's intention to impose tariffs is impacting UK business confidence, even though the overriding feeling is the UK will not be directly hit by tariffs; however, industries in the UK which supply the United States, and which rely on importing raw materials from countries which are directly being hit by tariffs, such as construction and vehicle manufacture, will suffer - and suffering, in the business world, tends to be addressed by cost cutting; the highest cost to any business is staff.
Cutting staff results in more people who are unemployed, which results in a higher welfare bill, which results in a hostile attitude towards disabled people, which results in support services being cut, which compromises resilience to the impacts of an ageing population.
If you're in a sector that is vulnerable to the aftershock effects of tariffs being imposed in areas of your supply chain, then reskilling means you can cross to safer ground quickly and easily without burning the bridges that got you to that better strategic position.
At least a million people in the UK are currently in sectors and roles which are vulnerable to the effects of tariffs imposed elsewhere. In the UK, a single person over 25 is most likely to only qualify for basic welfare support; this is just £393.45 per month, but also includes a separate element to cover housing costs (which is essentially unlimited, within the bounds of a person being agreed to be living in a house of appropriate size, and which is actually the element of welfare spending which is making the welfare spend "unsustainable", and, equally, the element over which individual claimants have least control - landlords decide rental prices, options for affordable housing are very limited, especially as a societal hyperfixation on individualism, and the weaponisation of therapeutic concepts such as boundaries see young adults kicked out of their family homes) - even if we were to exclude housing costs from calculations, and we assume that perhaps half of those at risk of losing their jobs because of the business confidence impacts of American tariffs on the UK economy are in a position to take early retirement, or to manage on a spouse or partner's income, meaning only 500,000 additional claimants hit the welfare system, and we assume none of those are in a relationship with someone similarly affected, or would meet the conditions for disability enhancement, that's still a further cost to the UK government of £196, 725,000 - that's almost £200million a month in additional spending.
Even if just 1% of the at-risk workforce found themselves requiring - and entitled to - the bare minimum of UK welfare, and before their housing costs are considered, the additional cost to the State would be £3,934,500 a month. With entire sectors at risk of crashing out, a wary economy lacking in confidence, which results in decreased risk appetite, and reduced recruitment, those months - months of the State paying millions to people who are out of work, and unable to find new jobs, rapidly become a year. Eighteen months. Two years.
Reskilling doesn't mean you're giving up hope that the sector you may well have given a significant chunk of your life to will bounce back - these things are cyclical; they don't always come back the same, but they always come back in some form; it simply means that you have a lot more than £393.45 a month coming in (and, in the UK, you can still claim State assistance with housing cost if you're in work), and it reduces the risk of the UK government rolling up things such as social support systems, which are used by single parents, parents with disabled children, people supporting elders financially, including disabled elders, people who are in low-wage employment, and those facing systemic exclusions and barriers, and which provide reassurance of support in older age for everyone.
The more money the UK exchequer has through income tax, the more it has available to invest - that's more potholes repaired, it's more and better schools, it's more appointments in the NHS, available sooner, it's the potential for dentistry to be brought back to its former strength. And the more likely it is that you'll be able to cross back across the bridge of re-skilling to the job you originally had at some point in the future, when things stabilise.
Services are exempt from tariffs, and the B2B service sector - which includes roles such as architects, lawyers, consultants, and accountants - is one of the UK's largest export income generators, as well as being a growing sector within the UK.
So; what should you reskill to?
Construction - emerging materials consultancy, trade employment law, cost accountant, trades retail merchandising, environmentally sensitive build training, site management, supply chain logistics, sustainable development consultant, recruitment and retention consultant, business development consultant, renovation design specialist, project management.
Vehicle Manufacture Process - sustainable transport logistics, design, urban planning, eco-engineering, emerging materials consultancy, systems design and development, project management.
And all of these reskills feed back into your original career when conditions support a return.
Re-skilling is the "fourth R" in the sustainability focus cycle, and, increasingly, that sustainability cycle is being seen not as "second best", or "something to consider for some quirky retro content", but as central to personal resilience and business success.
Reduce means identifying what's necessary, important, and the cause, not just a symptom.
At The Productive Pessimist Ltd, we focus on helping you reduce your problems, down to the one issue which is actually your barrier.
We work with you to reduce the distractions to your strategic focus, and reduce the number of steps from where you are now to where you want to be.
Reuse prompts you to hold a 'stock' of approaches, skills, and mindsets which can be applied to a diverse range of challenges and opportunities.
For example:
communication is a skill which can be applied to marketing, advocacy, leadership, teaching, writing, designing, landscaping, architecture, fundraising, counselling, and networking in the business sphere, whilst also being an effective personal tool for mindfulness, journalling, boundary-setting, performance improvement, and goal setting.
agile thinking is a mindset which helps you develop comfort and confidence with technology, gives you the confidence to pursue 'stretch' opportunities, navigate new cultures, societal shifts, and alterations in interpersonal dynamics, as well as making you a good coach, therapist, and problem solver. Agile thinking is also the foundation of resilience and determination.
mind-mapping is an approach which can be used to direct your thinking in the face of challenges ranging from career development to interior design.
Recycling centres on recognising where you can save effort and time by doing something well enough that it can be 'recycled' for future demands. For example, creating a cover letter with just enough tailoring means you can use the framework for every role that requests a cover letter, and just alter the tailored elements, rather than having to write an entire letter from scratch.
If you create your strategic plan with sufficient focus, the bones will hold up each future strategic plan, with just the elements, or 'skin', needing to be revised - freeing up time to actually put the plan into action, and minimising the time you and your team are drawn away from their core points of focus.
Reskilling isn't about forgetting your current and previous skills. It's about identifying related skills which can bridge the place you are now to emerging market demands.
For example, the American administration's intention to impose tariffs is impacting UK business confidence, even though the overriding feeling is the UK will not be directly hit by tariffs; however, industries in the UK which supply the United States, and which rely on importing raw materials from countries which are directly being hit by tariffs, such as construction and vehicle manufacture, will suffer - and suffering, in the business world, tends to be addressed by cost cutting; the highest cost to any business is staff.
Cutting staff results in more people who are unemployed, which results in a higher welfare bill, which results in a hostile attitude towards disabled people, which results in support services being cut, which compromises resilience to the impacts of an ageing population.
If you're in a sector that is vulnerable to the aftershock effects of tariffs being imposed in areas of your supply chain, then reskilling means you can cross to safer ground quickly and easily without burning the bridges that got you to that better strategic position.
At least a million people in the UK are currently in sectors and roles which are vulnerable to the effects of tariffs imposed elsewhere. In the UK, a single person over 25 is most likely to only qualify for basic welfare support; this is just £393.45 per month, but also includes a separate element to cover housing costs (which is essentially unlimited, within the bounds of a person being agreed to be living in a house of appropriate size, and which is actually the element of welfare spending which is making the welfare spend "unsustainable", and, equally, the element over which individual claimants have least control - landlords decide rental prices, options for affordable housing are very limited, especially as a societal hyperfixation on individualism, and the weaponisation of therapeutic concepts such as boundaries see young adults kicked out of their family homes) - even if we were to exclude housing costs from calculations, and we assume that perhaps half of those at risk of losing their jobs because of the business confidence impacts of American tariffs on the UK economy are in a position to take early retirement, or to manage on a spouse or partner's income, meaning only 500,000 additional claimants hit the welfare system, and we assume none of those are in a relationship with someone similarly affected, or would meet the conditions for disability enhancement, that's still a further cost to the UK government of £196, 725,000 - that's almost £200million a month in additional spending.
Even if just 1% of the at-risk workforce found themselves requiring - and entitled to - the bare minimum of UK welfare, and before their housing costs are considered, the additional cost to the State would be £3,934,500 a month. With entire sectors at risk of crashing out, a wary economy lacking in confidence, which results in decreased risk appetite, and reduced recruitment, those months - months of the State paying millions to people who are out of work, and unable to find new jobs, rapidly become a year. Eighteen months. Two years.
Reskilling doesn't mean you're giving up hope that the sector you may well have given a significant chunk of your life to will bounce back - these things are cyclical; they don't always come back the same, but they always come back in some form; it simply means that you have a lot more than £393.45 a month coming in (and, in the UK, you can still claim State assistance with housing cost if you're in work), and it reduces the risk of the UK government rolling up things such as social support systems, which are used by single parents, parents with disabled children, people supporting elders financially, including disabled elders, people who are in low-wage employment, and those facing systemic exclusions and barriers, and which provide reassurance of support in older age for everyone.
The more money the UK exchequer has through income tax, the more it has available to invest - that's more potholes repaired, it's more and better schools, it's more appointments in the NHS, available sooner, it's the potential for dentistry to be brought back to its former strength. And the more likely it is that you'll be able to cross back across the bridge of re-skilling to the job you originally had at some point in the future, when things stabilise.
Services are exempt from tariffs, and the B2B service sector - which includes roles such as architects, lawyers, consultants, and accountants - is one of the UK's largest export income generators, as well as being a growing sector within the UK.
So; what should you reskill to?
Construction - emerging materials consultancy, trade employment law, cost accountant, trades retail merchandising, environmentally sensitive build training, site management, supply chain logistics, sustainable development consultant, recruitment and retention consultant, business development consultant, renovation design specialist, project management.
Vehicle Manufacture Process - sustainable transport logistics, design, urban planning, eco-engineering, emerging materials consultancy, systems design and development, project management.
And all of these reskills feed back into your original career when conditions support a return.
Nothing is ever wasted.
If you'd like to learn more about inclusive re-skilling, we're focusing on this area for our £10 Quick Questions on Friday 21st, between 11am-3pm - get an answer to your questions in this area within 2hrs of payment being received by PayPal (theproductivepessimist@yahoo.com), at just £10 per question, up to a maximum of 20 questions per individual/organisation.
If you'd like a more in-depth consultation, book in with us for just £45 for an initial Discovery Session (90mins initial consult, with 2 further email follow ups free of charge.)
Check out our full range of services - click here to view
Email us: theproductivepessimist@yahoo.com
Comments
Post a Comment