On June 8 and 9, Canada’s Prime Minister is hosting the G7 Leaders’ Summit. In preparation for the Summit PM Trudeau published Canada’s G7: Creating growth for the middle class. It set out the five priorities that will guide their conversations:
- Investing in growth that works for everyone
- Preparing for jobs of the future
- Advancing gender equality and women’s empowerment
- Working together on climate change, oceans, and clean energy
- Building a more peaceful and secure world
To help people adapt to the changing nature of work, we must foster a culture of lifelong learning, and make sure everyone has access to the skills and training they need to compete in the workforce, today and tomorrow.” — Justin Trudeau
The G7 leaders will need to work like a beaver to advance this critical agenda. Using PM Trudeau’s post, I will discuss what you can do to build your Career Capital to help the G7 leaders solve some of the most significant challenges the world face and increase your chance of success in the new world economy.
Investing in growth that works for everyone
G7 Leaders challenge — GDP growth shows that the world is more prosperous than ever before. However, economic indicators, fail to capture the growing uncertainty of many people who are worried about their prospects and their children’s futures. The G7 leaders share a fundamental responsibility to stimulate economic growth that benefits everyone and those most at risk of being left behind. They are expected to embrace this challenge head-on by focusing on policies that create good jobs, grow the middle class, and address rising income inequality.
Your challenge — Invest in personal growth that works for you. Never stop learning. Learning is how you build your talent stack — skills, knowledge, wisdom, behavioral traits, and accomplishments. Your talent stack is your career capital. Your salary is your return on career capital. Think of the learning at the organization as getting a dividend. Knowledge increases your career capital. It is yours to take with you. I encourage you to take full advantage of every opportunity to get involved, learn and grow.
Preparing for jobs of the future
G7 Leaders role — Automation, technological breakthroughs, and global free trade have delivered unprecedented prosperity – but they have also led to significant change, especially in the labor market.
We cannot always build the future for our youth, but we can build our youth for the future.” Franklin Roosevelt
To help people adapt to the changing nature of work, we must foster a culture of lifelong learning, and make sure everyone has access to the skills and training he or she need to compete in the workforce, today and tomorrow.
I am advancing Opportunities for Micro-Credential Recognition on the Blockchain. Over our lifetime we build our unique “talent stack” of knowledge, skills, wisdom, experience on top of our behavioral traits. Learning is not just time in schools. It extends across multiple contexts, experiences and interactions. Building our talent stack is not an isolated or individual concept, but is inclusive, social, informal, participatory, creative and lifelong quest. Moreover, it is not sufficient to think of learning as just consumption, but instead, we are active participants and producers in an interest-driven, lifelong learning process.
A report from the EU concludes that blockchain technology clearly benefits from a network effect when applied transnationally, need for standardization activities in this area and that the main beneficiaries of the adoption of blockchain-based technologies in education are likely to be networks of educational organizations and learners. It can turn or education system from an outdated institution-centric model to a student-centric model.
Your challenge — Collectively as educators or business leaders, we need to understand digital natives and the way their minds work. We need to tailor our approach to education and work environments to maximize the potential of the next generation. Individually, use your talent stack where it will offer significant value and service. When you leverage your behavior strengthen, your secret superpowers, you will find what you were meant to do. Put yourself on the path to professional fulfillment:
- Passion comes with mastery and time. Be patient. Learn to love what you do. In most occupations only about a third of the people considered it their calling or an integral part of their life and identity.
- Make the quality of what you do your primary focus. This mindset acknowledges that no matter what field you are in, success is always about quality. Once you are focused on the quality of the work you are doing now rather than whether it is right for you, you will not hesitate to do what is necessary to improve it.
- Practice hard and get out of your comfort zone. So, how do you become the craftsman? You practice. Although deliberate practice is often strenuous and uncomfortable, it’s the only path to true mastery.
- Acquiring rare and valuable talent stack. People with rare talent stacks (skills, knowledge, wisdom, behavioral traits, and accomplishments) are more likely to get great jobs in which they are allowed creativity and control. Your talent stack is your career capital. It sets you apart. Improve the quality of whatever you do–and if that means acquiring a valuable compatible skill, do it. More career capital for you!
Advancing gender equality and women’s empowerment
G7 Leaders challenge — Today, women still do not have equal opportunities. Making sure women can participate fully and equally in the economy is not just the right thing to do – it is the smart thing to do. Over the last 40 years, the rising number of women participating in Canada’s workforce has accounted for about a third of our real GDP growth. The G7 Gender Equality Advisory Council job is making a series of recommendations at the Summit. I hope one of the proposals is related to Women in STEM. Having parents inspire their daughters to consider STEM is essential to fill this gap. Read about my niece and her daughter in Forget Princess I Want to Be an Astrophysicist.
The World Economic Forum estimates that with current rates of progress, that it will take 168 years until women are paid equally to that of men in North America. For all 144 countries in the study, it is expected to take 217 years before parity is reached. What is most surprising from these numbers is that they have all increased since research conducted in 2016. Blockchain could reduce pay inequality and accelerate the equality women seek regarding pay when incorporated into the business and governmental.
Embracing thought diversity changes how you define and harness human capital and lead to increased business success. Crafting a genuinely useful inclusion and diversity strategy is no small effort and requires strong and sustained and inclusive leadership. The potential benefits of stronger business performance are well worth it.
Your challenge — Celebrate success. Workers of all ages are motivated by real-time feedback, fun, engaging work environments, and status-based recognition over tangible rewards. For too many women, humility is social currency, and they assume (hope) that their accomplishments will speak for themselves — this is wishful thinking. Last year a Harvard researcher discovered that women tend to get less credit for their collaborative work — no matter whether they tout their efforts or not. Just speaking up will not solve this problem. You get creative about how to support and celebrate women in the workplace, particularly in fields where women are underrepresented, like engineering and technology, the more we can guarantee we are writing women into history — while we’re still busy shaping it. Celebrate success and giving credit where credit is due is a job for both men and women.
Working together on climate change, oceans, and clean energy
G7 Leaders challenge — Strong, coordinated action is needed now more than ever to tackle climate change, protect the world’s oceans, and transform the way we produce, transport, and use energy. People around the world depend on oceans for their livelihoods. They need to work with coastal countries and heads of international organizations to address threats facing our waters, from ocean plastic pollution to more frequent and severe weather events. Together, the G7 leaders must find ways to respond to these challenges, adapt to our changing climate, and protect our oceans for generations to come.
Your challenge — Be a citizen. Be involved. Think about the full potential of technology to benefit and impacts on humanity. Demand technological stewardship is part of the conversation. For example, in April Britain announced that it plans to ban the sale of single-use plastic straws, as support for similar bans grows in Canada and around the world. The oldest drinking straw in existence, found in a Sumerian tomb dated 3,000 B.C.E., was a gold tube. Disposal straws were patented in 1880. Should be have been thinking about how to dispose of them then? Today in the USA alone, there are over 500 million plastic straws disposed of each day. Our job as citizens is to raise issues to affect policy for things we are doing to future generations.
Building a more peaceful and secure world
G7 Leaders challenge — To work toward a future that puts people first and delivers progress for everyone. G7 leaders share a responsibility to build a more peaceful and secure world, recognizing that stability is necessary for economic growth. The leaders must stand up for the rules-based international order, remain beacons of democratic principles and human rights, and work together to meet the complex and evolving global security challenges of today’s world. None of the G7 leaders can solve these problems alone.
Your challenge — Amplify peace in your life and your part of the world.
- Find Inner Peace — If violence begins with stressful thoughts in your mind, then peace starts with silence in your mind. Practice healthy ways to release your stress daily. Your stress-free mind is critical to building a stress-free, peaceful community.
- Perform Acts of Kindness — Pay it forward. Find a way to help someone else when kindness is extended to you. Even better start the cycle.
- Create Work-Life Balance — Nurture all facets of your life. Family, work and make connections outside your family. Integrating different aspects of your life makes you will feel more connected to others and the world.
- Eliminate Prejudice — Learn about other cultures, religions, and customs enables you to understand different perspectives and develop a feeling of connection with all people.
- Resolve to Be Happy — When you are happy, can you uplift others around you. Harvard researchers suggest that people’s happiness extends up to three degrees of separation. Your joy spreads not only to your friends but also to their friends’ friends. Being unconditionally happy is a practice that only you can cultivate for yourself.
- Learn about yourself — As poet Robert Burns said “Oh, would some Power the gift give us, to see ourselves as others see us. It would save us from many mistakes and foolish thoughts.” We are incredibly passionate about Behavioral DNAand the impact this scientific insight can have on you. Using SuccessFinder, we give you the gift to see your behavioral traits as others see them. They see your strengths and challenges. You should know too! Focus on your strengths and manage your challenges is the secret to achieving career satisfaction and success — getting the maximum return on your career capital. We offer the service worldwide. We’d love to hear from you!
