The future of work: 10 skills you will need to be successful
– Institute for the future (2020). “Future work skills : 2020”
Ten skills for the future workforce:
- Sense making : ability to determine the deeper meaning or significance of what is being expressed
- Social intelligence: ability to connect with others in a deep and direct way, to sense and stimulate reactions and desired interactions
- Novel and adaptive thinking: proficiency at thinking and coming up with solutions and responses beyond that which is rote or rule-based
- Cross-cultural competency: ability to operate in different cultural settings
- Computational thinking: ability to translate vast amounts of data into abstract concepts and to understand data-based reasoning
- New media literacy: ability to critically assess and develop content that uses new media forms, and to leverage these media for persuasive communication
- Trans disciplinary: literacy in and ability to understand concepts across multiple disciplines
- Design mind-set: ability to represent and develop tasks and work processes for desired outcomes
- Cognitive load management: ability to discriminate and filter information for importance, and to understand how to maximise cognitive functioning using a variety of tools and techniques.
- Virtual collaboration: ability to work productively, drive engagement, and demonstrate presence as a member of a virtual team.
To be successful in the coming decades, individuals will need to demonstrate foresight in navigating a rapidly shifting landscape of organisational forms and skill requirements. They will increasingly be called upon to continually reassess the skills they need, and quickly put together the right resources to develop and update these. Workers in the future will need to be adaptable lifelong learners.
Reproduced by permission of Institute for the Future
Anna Davies, Devin Fidler, Marina Gorbis, copyright (c) 2011, Institute for the Future, Future Work Skills 2020
Our perspective
The industrial revolution was about ‘products’; mass production and distribution of standard products across the globe (as per the means of companies). People, the buyers, were faceless. They had to buy and compromise with whatever was produced. The skill set required to participate in the production and distribution of products were centered around efficiency – as similar products as possible, lowest cost material and manufacturing for the given specification, production, efficient logistical models, etc. Such a set of skills is not primary anymore.
In the fast emerging ‘post-industrial’ times, the buyers are now clearly identified and not faceless; consumers are being served what they want as products. The skill set required to reach out and communicate with every buyer and deliver products accordingly are centered on effectiveness – powerful communication and knowledge management systems, imagination, personalization, effectiveness of use, socio-cultural disposition of people, innovation as disposition, finer issues of design, etc. Indeed, a very different set of skills are now required to succeed in these times.
All across the board, there is an increasingly prevalent attitude among workers that, in the face of increased uncertainty and a shifting, constantly re-focusing economy, they have to become ‘free agents’ – highly-skilled ‘units of one’ not necessarily attached to a particular company, loyal to ‘projects’ and individual teams rather than organisations, and always looking out for new opportunities. It’s ‘skills security’ replacing ‘job security’.
Think ‘skills security’, not ‘job security’.
Gazing through the crystal ball
- It is never too late to become an independent learner – a key to be a self-learner to be on top of the fast changing world around us.
- Focus on ‘skills security’ implies investment of adequate time and attention on continuous professional development; it has to be self-development using the vastly growing content and community on the web because individual institutions and their instructors cannot match the quality of the web resources.
- For the skilled, the opportunities outside the traditional domain of specialisation would be as interesting as inside their domain. Think of newer applications of your skills.
