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If you’ve ever attended a conference, made interesting contacts, connected on social media, exchanged business cards, learned something new, got way from your desk, you’ve initially felt energized and excited, right? Then, what may feel like almost immediately, you briefly kept in touch with contacts at first as information digested quickly slid from top of mind, you deleted the conference app and the experience as a whole became all but a faded memory. Not always, but many times.
Typing this a few months later, however the opposite, at least for me, rang true with the commerce and creativity international business conference, C2 Montreal, I attended in May: I’m still feeling energized by the information, people and venue which packed a prolific punch.
Truth be told, I’m a bit biased having studied abroad at McGill University for one semester during college. Visiting my old stomping grounds, I felt invigorated by this vibrant city: its booming hub of tech innovation, entrepreneurial spirit, not to mention the amazing restaurants (is it possible every neighborhood can remind you of Brooklyn? But, I digress. Mental note: seriously visit Montréal more often.)
Between the non-stuffy conference auditorium settings with entertainers reminding you of Cirque du Soleil in the hallways walking a tightrope to a booming jazz band serenading the back of a meeting space, the contemporary city coupled with the visionary event space itself lent itself well to innovation, networking, thinking, creating.
The speakers, such as Sabrina Geremia, the country director for Google Canada, spoke about creativity, the landscape and changing scope of work and how we can lead and ultimately thrive. Geremia talked on stage about the common denominator of fear of automation from a variety of job levels and industries.
“This is one the most interesting moments to be alive. I call it a polarity. Imagine a rope in two different ends tugging on you with anxiety on one side and this really huge opportunity on the other side.”
Last year, while attending a conference about the future of technology in California, she told the driver where she was headed. “He said I feel like I’m going to be left behind,” Geremia recalled. “Then on the flip side, I work with CEOs and companies all over Canada and they’re worried they’re going to be left behind. We have this polarity of anxiety [among both the employee and employer perspectives] and then the opportunity.”
Opportunity, according to Geremia, could be seen like a bridge. “I'm in Toronto and I live near a bridge and when they built this bridge, they actually put in a subway line underneath the bridge but it was 50 years before subways were actually going to run, a forward thinking thought and it took three referendums...it wasn't by any means an easy investment.”
That’s how she feels about skills: when we have future bridges and need people who are able tools to lay the tracks, it’s important to make that investment.
“Part of the anxiety,” she said, “is rooted in the pace of change. It is moving fast. we all feel it, we know it, we see it....There’s 3.2 billion people on the internet in the world, there’s going to be five billion soon, there’s this shared resource of the world wide web through a phone. And the scope is huge.”
By understanding the tools of the future and training, how do we address that, she asked?
“It’s the mindset of continuous learning coupled with the right skills. Understand the tools of the future: STEM but then add in the A in the STEAM, the creativity of it, always know you have to learn new things all the time.”
So, as you learn new skills, to keep up with change and not be automated, Geremia indicated the most valuable skills in the workforce the next five years will be “passion for creativity and innovation and figuring out where your intersect is that’s going to change the world and make an impact.”
When hiring new employees, she looks for the top traits of mindset and learning adaptability. “You have to push yourself to practice being uncomfortable and think about being curious and see where your curiosity leads you and allows you to skill up.”
This may mean letting go of things, even though you may have done them well. “Maybe there’s another thing that’s doing it better. Constantly think about continuous improvements. There’s this whole loop of learning. Get yourself better. We look for that learning adaptability. We teach people the trade...we train them up into digital experts. Especially at the leadership level, you really have to make a concerted effort to talk about mindset.”
Even as she talked her nieces and nephews about their own career paths, Geremia advised: “Skate to where the puck is going. Right now that puck is digital and it’s digital skills. It’s not necessarily where you think your heart is...be curious, go try it out, take a couple of courses.”
