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The Great Skills Shift has started - how can teams and leaders ride the wave?

• Richard Parton

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The Great Skills Shift is happening, and it's probably not quite what you think. 

In this episode, we explore what's happening, why, and how leaders can help their teams ride the future skills wave. We look in particular at the World Economic Forum report highlighting the key forces at play: technological changes, green transition, demographic shifts, economic uncertainty, and fragmentation - and how they all impact job skills. We delve into the importance of adaptability and learning in the face of rapidly changing job requirements, the role of AI in augmenting human capabilities, and how leaders can strategically plan for the future. In our takeaways we talk through how do develop the right vision, foster a love for learning within teams, and leverage AI to enhance human uniqueness.

DIVE DEEPER - RESOURCES AND FURTHER READING:

Understanding Motivation - Self-Determination Theory


Josh Bersin: The Superworker

VIA Character Strengths


Future of Work & Skills

Richard:

Hi, and welcome to WARP Speed Leadership, a podcast about everything you need to know to be an incredible leader and enable your team to thrive in this hyper fast new world of work. I'm your host, Richard Parton, And in this

Nikki:

In this episode, we're,

Richard:

can leaders ride the future skills wave. are joining you today from Wurundjeri Land in Melbourne, Australia, and I'm joined by my two co-hosts, Nikki Ano, who's the founder, and CEO of scene culture, the Moneyball for Work and Teams. Hi, Nikki

Nikki:

hello.

Richard:

and Daryl Wright, who is a director at Orna and is an organizational agility coach and trainer.

Darryl:

Hi

Nikki:

Hi. Everyone.

Darryl:

be here.

Richard:

So we picked out this topic because we, came across a really interesting, report, from the World Economic Forum. And it was talking about, skills of the

Nikki:

Skills

Richard:

It talks

Nikki:

talks about these

Richard:

forces that are changing the

Nikki:

changing

Richard:

that are needed in the organization. And I'll just break

Nikki:

I.

Richard:

out. So technological

Nikki:

technological changes,

Richard:

automation, digital, et cetera. The green transition and the

Nikki:

and

Richard:

actually we often do not have the right skills in our organizations for, the net zero targets, ESG standards, et cetera, that a lot of businesses are needing to meet demographic shifts. We

Nikki:

shift.

Richard:

populations and changes in the way that the skills across, uh,

Nikki:

Science,

Richard:

making, making things interesting. If you need particular skills in your workforce. Economic

Nikki:

economic uncertainty,

Richard:

related

Nikki:

related to some

Richard:

about, but also things like inflation trade volatility, et cetera, fragmentation using the way that we've become. Interdependent as a, as a way of exerting influence, uh, over, uh, over other countries. Um, and,

Nikki:

And,

Richard:

uh,

Nikki:

uh,

Richard:

these

Nikki:

all of these things

Richard:

are

Nikki:

are related to each other

Richard:

we would do is dive into what are the themes that come out of this, and what is it that leaders, need to be thinking about now, in their organizations

Nikki:

agents

Richard:

make their.

Nikki:

to take

Richard:

Teams and their organizations, successful. So, Darryl, what are the key

Nikki:

one of

Richard:

that help us to understand how to address this?

Darryl:

Thanks, Richard. Well, I think leaders really wanna know how can we, best, ensure our chances for success into the future. And, uh, I think some of the questions that came up thinking about that Report was I. Are skills and jobs changing faster than they ever have before. the, I think what comes outta that report, the data suggests that it may well be, uh, and if that's the case, is there more uncertainty than ever before about what those future jobs and skills requirements might be and how they might need to change and what they might change into. Uh, and then the third question is, if both of those are true, then how will we best to proceed? How do we target what skills we need to learn? How do we, uh, best find out what those jobs need to look like and design them accordingly? it that we in fact, need to just maximize our speed to learning? if we can't predict what they're going to be like, maybe we just need to maximize our ability to adapt in that realm and therefore. Our speed to learning could become key. if that's the case, is that

Nikki:

The that really just

Darryl:

in another

Nikki:

in,

Darryl:

in another context? so yeah, that were some

Nikki:

yeah.

Darryl:

about it.

Richard:

Yeah. And I think,

Nikki:

They

Richard:

are skills and jobs changing fast

Nikki:

change

Richard:

Yeah. I I think the World Economic Forum and, and a, other research suggests That,

Nikki:

that,

Richard:

uh, that they

Nikki:

that they are

Richard:

of those,

Nikki:

of those

Richard:

do, you know, are to do with. factors around the

Nikki:

around L golf

Richard:

The, the environmental and economic shifts that are happening. Meaning that there's, you know, there are just different demands,

Nikki:

On demand.

Richard:

you know,

Nikki:

So

Richard:

The digital, ai, And, other sort of technological shifts that are happening. You know, of course, if those things are happening, if we

Nikki:

if we

Richard:

ways

Nikki:

ways to,

Richard:

productive. we need different skills. But the issue is that

Nikki:

Issue

Richard:

with many of those things layered on each other, they have a tendency

Nikki:

have a tendency to both accelerate each other.

Richard:

also to have these effects that are, that are difficult to predict. You know, in in complexity theory, you know, we talk about it as being in that complex domain where can't necessarily predict. You can see what's happening, but the only way of understanding, how you should act. Is very much by, testing and learning from, your experience which is. Where I connect with what you're saying about the, the agile connection.'cause that, that's a, a bunch of ways of working that relate very much to, how to work in those kinds of conditions. So, How about yourself,

Nikki:

how about yourself

Richard:

where does that take your, your brain and How do you feel leaders should be thinking about this?

Nikki:

I think something that, is, on my mind at the moment is how we like, prioritize what skills and capabilities are now most important or most, impactful, particularly for the future of work. And, And, and to frame up the way that I think about this, it's probably worthwhile just looking at historically anyway, the way that we view, um, uh, you know, the, the skills that we have. And so like one way in which we think about this is. As, as human beings, we, we come together to use certain skills in order to promote the value of the businesses that we work within, right? And, um, and, and that can be very much described as, uh, like different, different types of capital that a business has. So historically, you know, one thing, um. One thing that was really important was economic capital. Like, what are the things that we own? Um, or that's what business leaders, you know, really wanted to acquire, uh, in, in people. Uh, and then it shifted to intellectual capital. What do we know? Um, like what are our qualifications? What, what's the experience that we have that's, that's now evolved into incorporating now what we know as. Social capital, so who we know, you know what our influence is, our networks. Um, and, and what's been more recent is this idea of psychological capital. So how we think who we are. And now this idea of having a growth mindset being like a huge unlock in order for it. In order for us to now, adopt these new skills and capabilities to perform well. And, and when I think about. How it's evolved, from that history lens and look to the future. What comes to mind is how we are now, augmenting the skills through these, new, ai, tools and we by default look at how we can utilize AI to help us with what we do, right? Um, from a productivity standpoint, for instance. However, where I think is actually more impactful is how we can use AI to not do what we do so that we have more time, but actually. Enable us to be leveled up in terms of our capabilities, but specifically focused on the things that make us human because they're the things that, you know, AI and tech, um, it, it's, it's much harder for those things to be replaced. And, and, um, and there is like human character and virtue kind of, uh, attributes that, um, uh. That maintain our uniqueness as humans compared to, uh, compared to individuals.

Richard:

And

Nikki:

And so, um, uh, there's, there's much more that I can, that I can say to this, but I, I think, uh, I, I just wanted to offer, I guess that's, that's where my mind is thinking in relation to this and, and what are the skills that matter most today and in the future

Richard:

Yeah. Nice. It's, it is very much

Nikki:

very much about finding.

Richard:

actually is.

Nikki:

actually

Richard:

Valuable in an organization. And then how do humans relate to that? And, and of course as that changes, then we de we need different skills. Um, but I, I often find, and I know that, um, Darryl works in working in similar sorts of domains. the challenge in organizations is that there just isn't that alignment, from

Nikki:

that.

Richard:

folk who are thinking about. You know, what is it? What is it that our customers value? so often these are folk in the product space, uh, where they may be at marketing, uh, or sales even often have that insight. Uh, there, there often isn't that

Nikki:

Connections

Richard:

how, how we produce, how we produce the value. Whether that be software, whether that be, more tangible,, products. so

Nikki:

so often.

Richard:

Actually just making that connection. It, it can be very, it

Nikki:

Be great.

Richard:

esoteric, but just literally trying to help organizations to see, okay, so what do you

Nikki:

What.

Richard:

of your customers and how do you make sure that. you can see there actually is linked through to what we're doing. And if you can connect that through to, oh, okay, well these are the shifts we can see and therefore these are the skills that we need or are going to need, um, you know, that, that, that really can, can help. But to Darryl's point, it could be hard to predict long into the future. And so Creating a flexibility in people's is actually sort of, it's almost the key, the key unlock there. Um, I, I love that you're, um, you're sort of talking about sort of character strengths so we'll put a link in the notes to, uh, to the VIA character strengths, um, so that people can have a look at what those are. And there are a really good sort of set of definitions as to what humans often aspire to and, you know, where our source of strengths can, can, go. So Darrell, I know

Nikki:

I don't

Richard:

a lot about this, particularly in the ai, Space and how to relate that to skills. what are things that

Nikki:

What are things organizations coaching do to,

Richard:

try and level up there?

Nikki:

uh,

Darryl:

Richard. I think

Nikki:

for

Darryl:

really fundamentally important to remember here is that those different arenas that you, you know, you were just talking about those five fundamental shifts that come outta that report they have. Very different timeframes to influence, you know, something like,

Nikki:

like

Darryl:

AI

Nikki:

ai.

Darryl:

and then within a few months or a year or two, we could be doing an AI transformation across an organization. But some of those other factors like aging population, they take decades to shift. So I think there's this really interesting balance part of it is a process of discovery. You know, we don't know what wonders are going to come. Uh, and so that's a experimentation and discovery journey, but some aspects of it need intentionality. There are declarative thing, you know, what do we

Nikki:

what

Darryl:

Uh, to do about some of these geopolitical factors or, uh, population sizing and that sort of

Nikki:

that sort of,

Darryl:

know, those things we need to put clear intentions, uh, in place and then action needs to follow. Uh, so

Nikki:

so it's.

Darryl:

really important to not lose track of there's both, uh, and discovering the unknown, but there's also, you know, setting. Good intentions and goals and then working towards achieving them. One thing I'd

Nikki:

One thing I'd love to kind of.

Darryl:

to think about is yes, things like AI are gonna change, uh, what skills we have and what things we work on. One thing to think about is. you like to work on in the future? You know, do you wanna be able to leave all the drudgery and boring work to AI so you can do all the creative work? Or do you want it to be the opposite? You know, do you wanna be left with all the drudgery because we are leaving all the creative work to the ais?

Richard:

Yeah, I just wanna

Nikki:

I just wanna

Richard:

a little bit

Nikki:

a little bit further into.

Richard:

I, I know that you. Have lots of experience of helping organizations to do just that. would you go

Nikki:

How would you go about,

Richard:

got a leader sitting in front of you and they're like, oh my Lord, this is, this is

Nikki:

this is challenging.

Richard:

I, I've just been listening to this amazing podcast. They said I need to be, intentional, but I dunno what to do. Like, where, where would, where would you direct them to start?

Darryl:

One of the first

Nikki:

The first

Darryl:

say is that organizations often create some sort of

Nikki:

sort of.

Darryl:

Whether it's a vision or a mission or a goal or something like that around their product or their financial, but, uh, they don't do that same visioning for how they want it to be, to exist, to work in the organization in the future. Right. And it's

Nikki:

It's

Darryl:

important

Nikki:

as important to have a

Darryl:

for that,

Nikki:

that,

Darryl:

um, as

Nikki:

um, as it's for financial,

Darryl:

fact, maybe

Nikki:

maybe even more

Darryl:

So

Nikki:

so.

Darryl:

suggest that one of the places to start would be go through a future visioning process, talk about what do you want it to be like in five to 10 years to work at your organization. Um, what would you like that to involve? Um, what skills, what technologies, uh, you know, even how you want it to look in terms of All sorts of

Nikki:

Sort of

Darryl:

things. That's one

Nikki:

that's

Darryl:

get people to start with.

Richard:

Yeah, absolutely. Uh, Nikki, how would you then take that vision, that somebody has come up with, to put into practice?

Nikki:

practice.

Richard:

What are some of the pitfalls you might want to get people to think about avoiding, so that they, they get the right balance Sales..

Nikki:

I think a pitfall that we often fall into is thinking about optimizing for, for instance, productivity. How can we, output more widgets in less time? Right. And. What we wanna do, however, is, it's, it's not so much productivity or performance, it's, it's evolving to like impact and outcomes. Right. I'll use like the calculator as an, as an example, right? When we were in school, we would learn how to do multiplication, and we would learn how to do, many, many different realms of calculation, but the manual way, right? The reality is it's, not nearly as like, relevant to know how to do that manually when we all have calculators. Right? Um, and so instead the skill is not about, the working outs, you know, the calculation. It's about what are the right numbers to punch in a calculator. Right. We're, focused so much on understanding the inputs to something. where we need to put our focus is understanding not the output, but the outcome that we wanna achieve, such that we can fast track our way to actually deliver impact. Right? And so, when we are thinking about, for instance, assessment of skills, what, we tend to, Make, misjudgments on is, we think about whether someone is skilled based on how competent they are in something. and the reality is often they might not lack the competence in that particular skill. It's really that they're lacking the capacity. That particular skill. And this is where we can start to use, for instance, like AI tools or different ways of thinking to achieve the outcome that we need It's like, do you need to be better or do you just need to think about how to solve the problem differently? And this is where we're, we're starting to move into, like. Activating our creativity and our judgment and our critical thinking and our analytical thinking to think differently about how we achieve outcomes and impact instead of just trying to do the process more efficiently Josh Berson talks about this concept of the super worker, where, we think about how AI is transforming the work that we do. And, the first level is we use it, we use AI to assist us. To be more efficient. The second level is how we augment it by automating tasks to, in order to increase scale. The next is how we integrate it with our processes that we have. And then lastly, it's like autonomy, like, you know, AI managing multi-step processes with, with humans just supervising. but really it's. When we're actually using AI to enable us to be the human experts where we're applying that, you know, creativity and critical judgment and, systems thinking and all of that, that we really excel. And that's, that's really where I think we should be thinking about things.

Richard:

Yeah, absolutely. I think there are

Nikki:

I think there are two

Richard:

elements

Nikki:

that

Richard:

that I,

Nikki:

I,

Richard:

I think are

Nikki:

I think

Richard:

one of the things that, that you notice in these models is that they are extremely good at anything that is already out there in the world. So if there's, if there's a domain that there, where there's a bunch of knowledge out there, really good at that. and the challenge. that, so there's a lot of

Nikki:

Controversy

Richard:

just the

Nikki:

just

Richard:

intelligence because like, are they

Nikki:

all.

Richard:

Well, kind of in many ways. Not because there, there isn't really a, an ability to think, there isn't really an ability to have a model of the world. Um, there, there isn't

Nikki:

is no.

Richard:

to make moral or ethical. Judgements. And a lot of that is to do with not having a complex, understanding of like the world, humans, et cetera. And what I, what I really like about that, description there of, trying to tease out what is it, what is, what is the humanness that we,

Nikki:

Mm-hmm.

Richard:

bring is that, it actually is talking to what the technical challenge is. That is we, is far from solved. I mean, I'm very into a lot of the

Nikki:

A.

Richard:

capabilities that are out there. generally, spending my weekend sort of tinkering with these things. it's very

Nikki:

That's very

Richard:

What they're really good at is give them something simple, a flow that maybe has some simple decision making in it, you can add in, you know, find these

Nikki:

Find these pieces,

Richard:

and do some analysis. Because often that analysis, is something that is challenging for a human to do quickly. But AI are good at that. the moment you need to use lots of judgment that requires a model of the world, a model of understanding humans, that's where they tend to be challenged. I mean. Who knows, like in years time we might be

Nikki:

son.

Richard:

different discussion. You know, and that's part of the reason for this sort of challenge. We're like trying to think about skills. the models that we have available as foundation models, out there right now, they're, they're very challenging to,, distribute across a whole organization very deeply, because

Nikki:

still

Richard:

still very much

Nikki:

very much

Richard:

there as the assist or augment, stage. There are

Nikki:

there are.

Richard:

can integrate them, but the autonomy part is. I, would say there are that, that's a whole nother, a whole nother podcast. And there are, there are, there are, uh, frameworks out there to help you to decide when and what to what degree autonomy is a good idea. a rule of thumb, you really want to be very careful about having a human in the leap in the decision making process., and balancing that with, with risk. and so. That I do think is where we need to be developing the skills. for two reasons. One is that

Nikki:

One is that

Richard:

it's hard for the technology to do it, and the other one is that. It, it, that's just where we want our value to be. To, to Darryl's point a moment ago, we should try to envision what is, what is it, what's the company that we actually want? And then we make that happen rather than trying to just adapt to,

Nikki:

hmm.

Richard:

you know, the circumstances that are out there. Um.

Darryl:

by the winds of change.

Richard:

Y Ex. Exactly, exactly.

Nikki:

Exactly. Yeah.

Richard:

so, yeah. Daryl, what are your thoughts on, on that I know you have a few strong opinions about how to go about it the right way.

Darryl:

I just

Nikki:

I, I just wish,

Darryl:

That,

Nikki:

that.

Darryl:

know, people who are in the, in the role or have the, the desire or the, or the capacity to do so, um, would give themself the gift of spending a little more time being strategic in their thinking rather than getting caught up in the operational demands of the day-to-day work, and, and give themself and their organization and their people. That gift of thinking about, well, how do we want it to be here? Because once we've got that future state envisage, then we can make a plan, we can take steps towards it. we can get everyone on the same page, and then we can make it a reality. But

Nikki:

But while it's all nebulous,

Darryl:

you know, wishy-washy it, it's very

Nikki:

very hard to, actually,

Darryl:

action directing it to happen.

Richard:

Yeah. I'm gonna bring

Nikki:

I to

Richard:

close in a moment. And so our question was how can

Nikki:

how can.

Richard:

the future skills wave? We've talked about a bunch of

Nikki:

A bunch of different

Richard:

and

Nikki:

ways

Richard:

that are, that are important. my final thought that I wanted to add to what Darryl was just saying, there is also that.

Nikki:

So

Richard:

In order for us

Nikki:

for us to

Richard:

Skills, adaptability, actually

Nikki:

We actually need.

Richard:

teams and people who have a love of learning. And that love of learning is very much about making it enjoyable, helping people to be intrinsically motivated. humans are born with inquisitiveness. It's just part of our DNA and it's actually just about unlocking that. So giving people a bit of autonomy to be able to dive into interesting problems.

Nikki:

So

Richard:

here's an interesting piece of research. I often, end up talking about as a leader, literally

Nikki:

you just mention

Richard:

that

Nikki:

that,

Richard:

learning is an important outcome that you are interested in. There have been, a number of studies looking at how teams respond to that

Nikki:

that

Richard:

they found that even just

Nikki:

even just mention.

Richard:

actually has a, measurable difference in terms of how much team members value it and how much, uh, team members actually, uh. dedicate, uh, time to it. So

Nikki:

So

Richard:

there's a

Nikki:

there's a civil,

Richard:

a simple

Nikki:

civil thing.

Richard:

tomorrow, today even, that would, you know, change that learning orientation So,

Nikki:

So, okay.

Richard:

Darryl.

Nikki:

darl,

Richard:

What would

Nikki:

what would be

Richard:

go-to technique that you'd, you'd suggest people have a look at.

Darryl:

Um,

Nikki:

um, I'd say two things. Um, model

Darryl:

mindset. know, as

Nikki:

as a leader.

Darryl:

it means going first. It means leading the way and leading the way on showing that you are learning. You know, share the

Nikki:

Share the books

Darryl:

the podcast that you listen

Nikki:

customers to like this one.

Darryl:

Um, you know, tell

Nikki:

people

Darryl:

that you got wrong and what you learned about that, uh, will encourage everyone else to do the same. That's the first thing. And the second thing is time. You know, where do you and your teams get time? To spend learning, experimenting, improving. If you never

Nikki:

never

Darryl:

to change and you're a hundred

Nikki:

percent.

Darryl:

the way your organization is right now, Then 0% of your time allocated to learning and improvement is totally acceptable.

Nikki:

Uh, but otherwise.

Darryl:

it's gonna get you what you want.

Richard:

Nice. Thank you. uh, Nikki, what would be your advice to that leader who's trying to, figure out, the skills mix

Nikki:

my advice is to,

Richard:

I.

Nikki:

build a strategy around. What drives humans and like our basic needs, you know, like our need for connection, our need for autonomy, our need to be good at the things that we do, and having that essentially govern the way that we look at how we wanna upskill, And, how I think about this is. if we are adopting these, you know, AI tools thinking at it through the lens of transforming how work gets done while creating new opportunities for human expertise and judgment really elevating, our human uniqueness And, I would suggest just doing a search of what these, what these six human virtues are. It's part of the, the Via character strengths and looking at, alright, well. Which are the ones that matter to me that I wanna lean into and amplify, and as a result, what does that mean for how I can get AI to give me that capacity?

Richard:

That's a great, place to,

Nikki:

place to,

Richard:

wrap up. So

Nikki:

so

Richard:

notes,

Nikki:

show notes

Richard:

a link to the, the Via strengths I think he was just referring to,

Nikki:

to

Richard:

and the,

Nikki:

the.

Richard:

Berson piece on, the, the super worker. and also, put a link in

Nikki:

when we compare to

Richard:

um, the,

Nikki:

the

Richard:

the basic

Nikki:

basic

Richard:

Uh, element that, uh, that Nick was referring to there.

Nikki:

very, very much, you understand how to

Richard:

Get

Nikki:

get motivation going.

Richard:

in your team, that's a great place to start So

Nikki:

So

Richard:

that,

Nikki:

that, um,

Richard:

brings us very much to the end of another

Nikki:

another episode,

Richard:

Leadership. we make the show to help leaders create incredible workplaces in a world that increasingly feels like it's moving at warp speed. We hope you found it useful. Please like,

Nikki:

like.

Richard:

leave us a review, share us with your network, and check out the show notes. with that, thanks very much for listening. next time.