NAWO is a community for future focused and adaptive learning. The career journey is a long, and for many of us, a winding road. This quote from Peter Drucker, Management Guru and Author of many best-selling leadership titles, speaks to the importance of lifelong learning:
“Working life has extended so much in the last fifty years that it exceeds life expectancy of even the most successful businesses. Very few businesses are successful for more than 25 or 30 years. And yet most educated people who go to work in their early twenties will keep working until they are 70. And so they had better be prepared for a second career whether it’s in another organisation where they are doing what they have been doing or in a new line of work. They must be prepared to learn again. They must be prepared to position themselves. They must be prepared to want to learn- to see it not as something they need to do, but as something they enjoy doing. They will have to learn how to learn.”
― Peter Drucker
Whilst businesses change shape, priorities shift, technologies change and crises emerge there is one thing that holds true – each and every one of us is responsible for our own continual learning and development.
Our Five Key Learning Priorities were originally developed to support women in career to develop their strengths and ensure NAWO curated events around meaningful topics for professional women in operational careers. Over time, the diversity of our audiences has expanded and our vision and mission has become more focussed.
More than ever, we enthusiastically encourage men who are active allies for change to come and be involved in NAWO events, forums and programs. This, together with a desire to reach a more diverse audience generally, has resulted in us evolving these priorities to be less about ‘what women should be doing to improve themselves’ and more about ‘what it takes to be successful, and more inclusive in an operations workplace striving for greater gender balance’.
Our current priorities articulate the essential ingredients for success the future world of operations – Business and Technical Acumen, Influence and Negotiation, Maximising your Effectiveness and Adaptive and Courageous Leadership. Importantly priority number 1 is Building and Leading Diverse Teams, which is driving content that specifically focuses on ways to be a more inclusive leader every day.
We look forward to you joining us and taking forward every action oriented key learning that you can to add to your tapestry of lifelong learning and make an even more positive contribution to your workplace.
