#Key #Skills of the #Future (#now)
Pune, India, 14 January 2024
Why is it important to define and differentiate between learning, training, and performance? Why is it important to go back to the basics?
In May 2023, the World Economic Forum published its fourth annual ‘Future of Jobs Report’. According the report, 60% workers will require retraining before 2027 but only half of workers have access to adequate training. Analytical Thinking (10%) and Creative Thinking (8%) are the top two predicted priorities for corporate skills training and workforce development.
The following graphics from the report (source citation in the respective captions) are relevant to the context of this article.
Source: Core Skills in 2023: World Economic Forum, Future of Jobs Survey 2023https://www.weforum.org/publications/the-future-of-jobs-report-2023/
Source: Skills on the Rise: World Economic Forum, Future of Jobs Survey 2023 https://www.weforum.org/publications/the-future-of-jobs-report-2023/
In Figure 1, the first column is the relative importance of a skill as a core skill in the workplace (e.g, around 70% companies feel Analytical Thinking is a Core Skill requirement), while the second column illustrates the percentage share of the skillset (e.g Analytical Thinking is at around 9% among all skillsets). Figure 2 represents the importance of specific skills in the workplace (the percentage of surveyed companies that feel the skill is increasing or decreasing in importance). The light blue indicates rise in requirement and if that is high it is interpreted as a key skill for future as well.
What is Analytical Thinking and how is it developed? What is Creative Thinking and how can it be developed?
What struck me when I was looking at these graphics was that the Top 5 core skills require individual initiative and inherent curiosity to begin with (as opposed to traditional directed training approaches). These are skills that one has to learn, they can’t effectively be ‘taught’. In an age where content is prescribed, packaged and delivered without anyone asking for it, how are companies going to develop such skills?