The value of lifelong learning — and strategies for making it work
Developing new skills and knowledge is a priority in the investment industry today, as the pace of change creates challenges for professionals across multiple fields. Here are some key strategies to enable you to embrace long-term upskilling.
The idea that learning should be a continuous process throughout a professional career rather than being limited to specific points in time is increasingly accepted as a vital way to approach today’s professional challenges.
First, the requirements for many jobs are evolving all the time, driven by a host of macro and micro factors that include business priorities, regulatory changes, competitive pressures, or the constant march of technology. The skills and knowledge that serve you well in one period of your career may not be appropriate for the next.
Second, careers are becoming longer as people’s lifespans extend and they find that they either must or want to work for longer. As noted in a recent CFA Institute blog, the longevity shift is rewriting the rules of investment career progression. Staying relevant through regular upskilling at different points in their career is the best way for professionals to ensure they can continue to add value through their work and achieve satisfaction.
Third, the very act of learning not only brings immediate benefits in increased knowledge, but also demonstrates something of your character. Firms are putting more emphasis on skills in hiring, but learning new skills also sends an important signal to employers that you are willing to challenge yourself to change. With the future in many areas highly uncertain, many will be looking for staff who can show a commitment to lifelong learning.
“Those are the individuals that firms will feel can adapt to whatever’s coming down the road in five or ten years’ time, and they can redeploy those people as needed,” said Dan Whitehead, Founder and Career Coach, City Career LAB.
How to best approach lifelong learning will depend on the individual, but knowing key strategies recommended by professional development experts and executives who have experienced the benefits in their own careers will help to guide you in your own journey.
1. Identify long-lasting trends
Staying relevant in the investment industry means making sure you are identifying the most important topics that will help you develop, spotting those trends where knowledge will be most valuable and expertise will be a true differentiator. Framing your learning in this way will help ensure that your efforts make a practical difference, rather than just becoming a side interest.
“You have to commit to a vision of what you want to become through learning,” said Oliver Arribas, CFA, a financial consultant. “Your vision needs to be driven by purpose. People who get into the industry just for status tend to get lost or burned out.”
The best trends to identify are those whose importance is already obvious but where the outcome is unknown or highly variable. Making sure you are on the right trajectory is the key here, and in investment there is no shortage of topics to address.
“The pace of change on the regulatory side is high, and it can be a differentiator if you understand the impact of regulations on what you do,” said Whitehead. “Climate is another area of huge impact, and where it is hard to say how the investments that are being made are going to play out.”
Client expectations now demand that investment professionals are simultaneously fluent in private markets and public markets. “All these silos are coming down — before, people specialized in just equities or just fixed income, and then it became multi-asset,” added Whitehead. “Then it was between public markets or private markets, but now it is just markets.”
2. Break it down...
Busy professionals can be time-poor, particularly as their careers progress, and this can become a conscious or unconscious excuse for dismissing the very idea of trying to incorporate learning into your life at all. The secret to success is to keep learning manageable.
“I find it is effective if I write down a list of things to do — I do a brain dump and then I prioritize the items,” said Stephanie Liang, CFA, Portfolio Manager, Dimensional Fund Advisors. “Then I tick things off one by one, which makes it more fulfilling.”
Prioritizing what you learn according to the time you have available, and then finding ways to allow your existing routines to embrace it , is a key strategy to making development achievable.
“Try to pick the parts that are most relevant and critical and focus on those first, and try to introduce some sort of micro-learning into your schedule,” said Whitehead. “That might be listening to a podcast on your commute, or while you’re walking your dog. It means you are fitting it in more naturally, instead of saying you are going to set aside a whole afternoon once a week to sit down and try to absorb information.”
3. ...but keep it structured
Adopting micro-learning doesn’t mean abandoning structure — it enables it when you might have been tempted to think it impossible. And there are good reasons to keep your learning as structured as possible.
A structured approach to learning allows you to practice specific skills in a diligent way, instead of approaching a subject more casually. At best, the casual approach will take much longer to get to the end result; at worst, you won’t make it at all, either because you lose interest and focus, or because it is too inefficient as a learning method.
“Using a sports analogy, you could learn to play soccer by joining a game where most of your time is spent running around and you don’t have the ball, or you could do specific, targeted drills, with very focused training,” said Jim Pyke, CFA, Managing Director, TCB Advisors. “If you are not doing deliberate practice to get better, your development is going to be slow.”
Increasingly, you can use technology to help create your own structure or to develop learning resources quickly, and this even extends to the field of interpersonal skills. Today, generative AI can fulfil some of the functions of an executive coach by giving you pointers for certain situations.
“I’ve developed an internship program at my alma mater and one of the steps is that we provide coaching interviews to students,” said Pyke. “I’ve used GenAI to develop potential interview questions to help students and suggested that they use it as a tool for interview preparation.”
4. Pursue formal certification
The logical extension of a structured approach to learning is to seek relevant certification. Your career has already undoubtedly taught you much just through your day to day work, but it’s important not to underestimate the value of formal certification when it comes to developing and extending your range of skills, and demonstrating your value to others in a way that is independently validated.
“CFA Institute provides knowledge that has been verified and published by experts in the industry,” said Arribas. “In the age of AI, it’s important to get education from recognized institutions with trusted standards.”
The discipline of structured learning that leads to a defined qualification or certification — such as working through a course or set of courses like the CFA® Program — acts as a powerful incentivizing force and will help you stay on track.
“I encourage people to set themselves a target,” said Eleonore Dachicourt, CFA, Managing Director, Head of Sustainable Investments, Wealth Management, Asia, at BNP Paribas, and a certified executive coach. “Mine is to complete at least one new learning journey or certification a year.”
Dachicourt added: “A test or assessment at the end keeps me disciplined, focused and accountable. That structure turns learning into a playful challenge - and that’s what keeps me engaged and growing.”
5. Define passion, create opportunities
There is also a less tangible but no less important benefit to lifelong learning that shows how a long-term and patient approach can bring exponential value both personally and professionally.
Exposing oneself to learning can help to reveal and define your passion and interest, which in turn can open up opportunities and possibilities that might not have existed before.
“How do you really know what your passion is?” said Pyke. “Some people do know, and they go in that direction, but what about all the things that you haven’t been exposed to as you move through your career? How do you gain more exposure?”
Learning is one way to this. “This is why lifelong learning is so important,” said Pyke. “When you achieve something new in a one part of your life, it primes you to be more successful in other parts of your life.
“It’s about having pathways to accomplishment.”
Curious about the latest mid-career trends, challenges, and opportunities? Explore more in our series designed for finance professionals navigating their mid-career journey.
Staying relevant in the AI era: A guide for mid-career investment professionals
Balancing work and study as a mid-career investment professional
Upskilling at 50: How experienced investment professionals can adapt to change
What skills will finance workers and organizations need in an uncertain future?
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