Member Article

Critical Skills for the Future of Work

We live in a world of accelerating change.

New industries are constantly being born and old ones are becoming obsolete. A report by the World Economic Forum reveals that almost 65% of the jobs school children will be doing in the future do not even exist yet. Both the workforce and our knowledge base are rapidly evolving.

Combined with the effects of technological automation on the workforce, this leaves us with a crucial question: what are the skills future generations will need?

These are the skills and mindsets young people, and current workers alike, will need in order to meet their full potential.

Critical Thinking and Problem Solving

We spend so much time teaching students how to answer questions that we often neglect to tech them how to ask them. Asking questions - and good ones - is a foundation of critical thinking. Before you can solve a problem, you must be able to critically analyse and question what is causing it. This is why critical thinking and problem solving are coupled together.

The workforce today is organised very differently than it was a few years ago. What we are seeing are diverse teams working on specific problems, as opposed to specific capabilities. Your manager doesn’t have all the answers and solutions - you have to work to find them.

Above all, this skillset builds the very foundation of innovation. We have to have the ability to question the status quo and criticise it before we can innovate and prescribe an alternative.

Collaboration Across Networks and Leading by Influence

One of the major trends today is the rise of the contingent workforce. In the next five years, non-permanent and remote workers are expected to make up 40% of the average company’s total workforce. We are even seeing a greater percentage of full-time employees collaborate at different offices across the planet.

Technology has allowed work and collaboration to transcend geographical boundaries, and that’s truly exciting. However, collaboration across digital networks and with individuals from radically different backgrounds is something our youth needs to be prepared for. According to a New Horizons report on education, we should see an increasing focus on global online collaboration, where “digital tools are used to support interactions around curricular objectives and promote intercultural understanding.”

Within these contexts, leadership among a team is no longer about commanding with top-down authority, but rather about leading by influence. Ultimately, it’s about how people make change today - by trying to influence diverse groups and then create alliances of groups who work together towards a common goal.

Agility and Adaptability

We live in a volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous world. Hence, it’s important to be able to adapt and redefine one’s strategy.

It’s worth noting how traditionally our education and work mindset have been designed for routine and fixed procedures. We learn how to do something once, and then we do it over and over.

Learning means becoming habituated. But what is it to constantly relearn? To be comfortable with perpetual learning?

In the post-industrial era, the impact of technology has meant we have to be agile and adaptive to unpredictable consequences of disruption. We may have to learn skills and mindsets on demand and set aside ones that are no longer required.

Initiative and Entrepreneurship

Traditionally, initiative has been something students show in spite of or in addition to their school work. For most students, developing a sense of initiative and entrepreneurial skills has often been part of their extra-curricular activities. With an emphasis on short-term tests and knowledge, most curricula have not been designed to inspire doers and innovators.

Are we teaching people to lead? Are we encouraging them to take the initiative? Are we empowering them to solve global challenges? Even in corporate settings, business leaders are struggling to find employees who consistently seek out new opportunities, ideas and strategies for improvement.

Effective Oral and Written Communication

A study by the Partnership for 21st Century Skills showed that 89% of employers report graduate entrants as deficient in communication.

Clear communication isn’t just a matter or proper use of language and grammar. In many ways, communicating clearly is an extension of thinking clearly. Can you present your argument persuasively? Can you inspire others with passion? Can you concisely capture the highlights of what you are trying to say? Can you promote yourself or a product?

Richard Branson famously said: “Communication is the most important skill any leader can possess.” Like many, he has noted it is a skill that can be learned and consequently used to open many opportunities.

Assessing and Analysing Information

We now live in the information age. Every day we create 2.5 quintillion bytes of data. This would fill 10 million Blu-Ray disks.

While our access to information has dramatically increased, so has our access to misinformation. While navigating the content of the information they access. Moreover, this information is continuously evolving as we update our knowledge base faster than ever before.

Curiosity and Imagination

Curiosity is a powerful driver of new knowledge and innovation. It is be channeling a child-like sense of awe and wonder about the world that we can truly imagine something even better. It takes powerful imagination to envision breakthroughs and then go about executing them. It is the reason Albert Einstein said: “imagination is more important that knowledge.”

We consistently spoon-feed people with information instead of empowering them to ask questions and seek answers. Inquisitiveness and thinking outside the box needs to be treated with the same level of importance the school system gives to physics or maths.

Transforming the Future of Education

There is a stark contract between these survival skills of the future and the focus of education today. Instead of preparing them for work, we should prepare them for life.

Beyond creating better employees, we must aim to create better leaders and innovators. Doing so will not only radically transform the future of education and the workforce, it will also transform the world we live in.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Hannah Lennox .