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Would you rather navigate your career with outdated or updated skills?

Upgrading skills is largely about identifying and seizing the development opportunity when it arises.

Katarina Engblom / April 15, 2021

My daughter attends secondary school in a sports-focused class. Some time ago, the school invited a sports psychologist to talk to all parents about supporting young athletes in their career. When listening to the psychologist talking about performance in sports, I felt that everything he said could be applied to business and my work as a leader.

Inspired by the presentation, I started studying sports psychology in my spare time, with the aim to draw a new perspective on my work. Upgrading skills is largely about identifying and seizing the development opportunity when it arises.

Seize the opportunity for learning

Today, I can’t really rely on my master’s degree from two decades ago anymore, and I shouldn’t. In the same way as maps of cities or countries become obsolete as areas develop, the same way our skills become outdated as the world changes. Old maps – or degrees – make it difficult to navigate in cities, the world or work today.

Therefore, maps and skills need to be regularly refreshed, updated, and broadened. TietoEVRY is running a massive training program to encourage 3,000 of their experts get certified in Azure cloud technologies. For a large company, this is an ambitious goal, but great ambition also generates great results for the business, customers, and people. By encouraging and inviting people for skills development,

1. The company will strengthen its capital.

2. Customers get more value and cool stuff.

3. People create growth capital, inspiration, and energy for themselves.

At TietoEVRY, every certified Azure professional will gain knowledge and expertise that will allow them to do their work in a more advanced, more enthusiastic, and pioneer-like way. Additionally, they will get a proof about their new skills. Browsing Twitter or completing a certificate are two completely different ways to develop skills.

You might ask ‘how’

Lifelong learning comes often with a lifelong question: how to make time for learning. I believe we all need to find our own unique answer to that question. To me, it comes down to a decision to prioritize: decide what is important, find time for it, and let nothing intervene or stop you from using that time for learning. It might mean a day off to study sports psychology or an hour blocked in the middle of the day to read the latest in technology.

When I look back on the early years of my career, I feel that everything has changed: ways of working, customer challenges and opportunities, culture and values at work, leadership, technology. Today, I would not survive with the skills I had in my 20s. Luckily, I do not need to. I have had and seized opportunities to update, grow and renew my skills along the way.

When you are offered an opportunity to develop your skills, it is worth taking it. When you get inspired to learn something new in any area of work or life, it's worth using that inspiration for learning. As individuals, communities, and businesses, we constantly need to update our maps to best navigate in this ever-evolving world.

Microsoft Azure trainings benefit both our professionals and customers

Katarina Engblom
Director, One Commercial Partner at Microsoft

Katarina Engblom leads the One Commercial Partner unit at Microsoft in Finland, supporting and enabling Microsoft partners to empower customers to achieve more with help of technology. Katarina strongly believes in lifelong learning and continuous growth.

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Katarina Engblom

Director, One Commercial Partner at Microsoft

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