One of the big questions many WLP professionals have had of late concerns the pace with which technologies are changing and presenting new options for them, either for development or implementation. Personally, I think that it's futile for those in training and human performance improvement roles to try staying on the bleeding edge. It's not worth it because you can never move fast enough. Cruising LifeHacker today, I came across a NYT article that makes the same point from the perspective of a homeschooling parent.
But the editorial raises another important consideration than simply staying on top of technology. Mr. Kelly highlights the notion that because technological advancement is so rapid now, most people will always be beginners, and that the notion of life-long learning has never been more salient or demanded. This has important implications for workforces around the globe: The only constant is change. The only question is how organizations address that reality.
I've talked about information literacy in the past. The need for technological literacy, as Mr. Kelly notes, is also an obvious and growing requirement as well. It stands to reason that organizations less technologically literate - those that do not learn, apply technology, and evolve - are likely to miss future goals, and worse, be left behind altogether.
How endemic is technology in everything your organization does? Do your organization's professional development plans account for and measure technological literacy?
