Beyond the Job: Learning Through Failure | A.M. Bhatt & Mostafa Analoui

Okay, so listen, a little context.

I mean, I think you know this, but I spent most of my life on the advisory side and the corporate side on human development, leadership development in context of large-scale innovation, right? So organizations in pharma and tech that were trying to do things that were sort of industry shifts, right? And so this issue of development is...

I've got a multifaceted perspective on it, I suppose.

What we were trying to do with DAE as a nonprofit was to bring that work to audiences that forget about not getting to be on the sort of bleeding edge of things.

They weren't getting to be on the trailing end of things.

And we thought, can we experiment with just leapfrogging? And without getting into, you know, 30 years of perspective, the bottom line I'll give you on it to answer your question is consistent.

This is not a new problem, though.

It is much more acute now through technology, which we can talk about later.

The same problem has existed for 30 years, that we prepare people for destinations.

Right? And it's sort of the idea of, okay, I have to get somebody to Atlanta, I have to get somebody to Detroit, I have to get somebody to Des Moines, i.e., I have to get somebody into a, you know, I don't know, IoT coding job, I have to get somebody into a CNA training program, I have to get somebody.

Well-intentioned, well-designed, well-executed, metrics look great, high fives all around.

The problem is you don't develop travelers.

When they land in Atlanta and it turns out that they need to now go to, you know, Nashville, they have no clue what to do.

And so the whole thing operates like life and career were on train tracks.

And we have to get people from here to there.

Right skills, right competence, right certifications.

Again, all good stuff.

But we don't prepare them to be travelers.

And we got away with that when the world was relatively stable, when careers were relatively stable, when career trajectories were relatively stable, when industries were relatively stable.

And no surprise, they haven't been for a while, and they're about to get even worse.

It's

changing rapidly.

Yeah.

And so we're putting people into tracks that in six months are going to have them in a job and clueless how to navigate deep ambiguity, uncertainty, et cetera.

Mustafa,

Okay, so listen, a little context.

I mean, I think you know this, but I spent most of my life on the advisory side and the corporate side on human development, leadership development in context of large-scale innovation, right? So organizations in pharma and tech that were trying to do things that were sort of industry shifts, right? And so this issue of development is...

I've got a multifaceted perspective on it, I suppose.

What we were trying to do with DAE as a nonprofit was to bring that work to audiences that forget about not getting to be on the sort of bleeding edge of things.

They weren't getting to be on the trailing end of things.

And we thought, can we experiment with just leapfrogging? And without getting into, you know, 30 years of perspective, the bottom line I'll give you on it to answer your question is consistent.

This is not a new problem, though.

It is much more acute now through technology, which we can talk about later.

The same problem has existed for 30 years, that we prepare people for destinations.

Right? And it's sort of the idea of, okay, I have to get somebody to Atlanta, I have to get somebody to Detroit, I have to get somebody to Des Moines, i.e., I have to get somebody into a, you know, I don't know, IoT coding job, I have to get somebody into a CNA training program, I have to get somebody.

Well-intentioned, well-designed, well-executed, metrics look great, high fives all around.

The problem is you don't develop travelers.

When they land in Atlanta and it turns out that they need to now go to, you know, Nashville, they have no clue what to do.

And so the whole thing operates like life and career were on train tracks.

And we have to get people from here to there.

Right skills, right competence, right certifications.

Again, all good stuff.

But we don't prepare them to be travelers.

And we got away with that when the world was relatively stable, when careers were relatively stable, when career trajectories were relatively stable, when industries were relatively stable.

And no surprise, they haven't been for a while, and they're about to get even worse.

It's

changing rapidly.

Yeah.

And so we're putting people into tracks that in six months are going to have them in a job and clueless how to navigate deep ambiguity, uncertainty, et cetera.

Mustafa,