View publication - Chartered Institute of Housing

PART TWO: LEADING TOMORROW
Introduction to Part two – leading tomorrow
By John Thornhill, Learning Officer at CIH
‘Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other.’
John F Kennedy
Part two of this anthology considers in more detail the new skills and knowledge sets
and approaches to learning which will be required by successful organisations operating
in the housing industry of the future. Contributors to this anthology have identified
some ‘golden threads’ which when viewed together provide a revealing depiction of
tomorrow’s housing professional. We will consider some of these ‘golden threads’ below.
Learning to learn – A consistent view emerging from this project has been that the
housing professional of the future will primarily need to ‘learn how to learn’; and that
this engagement with learning on an on-going basis will be a defining characteristic of
career pathways. As work becomes more complex, with continuous change an overarching
feature, individuals will be confronted with work-based scenarios they have not
encountered before. Learners will need to become increasingly flexible and adaptable,
more focused on finding information and solutions and skilled at applying newly
acquired knowledge in different contexts. For employers, there will be a move away
from rigid competency frameworks, job/task-descriptions and process driven
performance management. For individuals there will be a new emphasis on agility and
the ability to respond to new ways of working.
‘Life in perpetual beta’ – The metaphor ‘life in perpetual beta’ is borrowed from the
world of software engineering, but it adequately expresses the mutability of the modern
workplace. ‘Perpetual beta’ is the name given to the keeping of software at the beta
development stage for an extended or indefinite period of time. It is often used by
developers when they continue to release new features that might not be fully tested.
Increasingly, developers see their products as never reaching a defined end-stage of
development, such is the reality of constant technological change. The metaphor ‘life in
perpetual beta’ refers to the way in which technology transforms the ways in which we
think about ourselves as individuals and a society; but by extension it also captures the
speed of change in the modern age. Individuals and organisations will have to learn to
act in less planned, less process-focused ways. This will also entail both individuals and
employers being open to change, embracing transferability and thinking outside of
traditional silos.
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