What are the critical skills for the future of work?
Steven Forth is co-founder and managing partner at Ibbaka. See his skill profile here.
The skills that we need to build resilience and adaptation are changing as the economy begins to emerge from the first phase of the Covid 19 pandemic. There will be no rapid return to normal. Instead we are likely to see several different new normals emerge, depending on geography, industry and business model. All of us will be stretched to come to terms with this. Learning and applying new skills will be central to our work and to how we help each other.
Ibbaka is researching what these skills will be, how we will acquire them, and how we will put them to work.
Share your ideas on the critical skills for the future of work. Three minute survey.
What are critical skills?
Critical skills are the intersection of foundational and core skills that grow over time.
Foundational skills are one of Ibbaka’s default skill categories (along with Social, Business, Design, Technical, Tool and Domain). A foundational skill is a skill that one uses over ones life to build other skills.
Core skills, on the Ibbaka Talent platform, are quite different. Core skills are the skills that one uses everyday in ones work and that are essential to that work.
By combining foundational and core skills, we uncover critical skills that are 1) essential to doing work and 2) that are used to build other skills over time
How will research on critical skills be applied?
Ibbaka will apply this research in three ways.
They will be included in our Open Competency Model work. Open competency models will be enriched and kept current with insights into skill research. These are accessible to the general public as a means to understand how their skills fit in various communities of practice
They will be added to the skill graph, learning resources will be connected to each skill, and they will be available to all users of the Ibbaka Talent platform.
They will be connected to other skills, to provide insight into how groups of skills combine to help us get work done and to work together.
How is skill research conducted?
We are searching for insights in many different ways. There is no one approach that will tell us everything we need to know about emerging skills and how they are being applied.
Analysis of the skill graph. We will use network analysis techniques to discover which skills are most important to people. This includes working out which skills have the highest degree, closeness, betweenness and Eigen vector centrality. See Network centrality and shared skills. By putting skills in a skill graph, we can leverage AI and machine learning to get insights into how they are best combined. Skill insights can be gained through the following data points most often used in social networks:
Degree Centrality - is determined by the number of connections to a skill. This identifies skills that are central to a vast array of roles and people. In social platforms, people with a lot of “followers” have a high degree centrality.
Closeness Centrality - finds the nodes that are closest (as measured by the number of edges one needs to travel across) to the other nodes (or some subset of nodes). The “closer” two skills are, the easier it is to learn one once you have the other. This concept is similar to the friends and friends of friends notion most social platforms have.
Betweenness Centrality - identifies the nodes that are on the paths between nodes. This concept may influence how a skill is learned depending on the related skills a person may have (e.g. degree of difficulty in learning contract negotiation once a baseline negotiation skill is present)
Eigenvector Centrality - is a measure of the influence of a node in a network. This measures the strength of the connections of a skill with other skills (i.e. the difference between acquaintances, friends, close friends, best friends, etc)
Interviews with thought leaders in many different areas to see what skills they are developing to help them with their own work.
Surveys on critical skills and critical uncertainties for the future of work.
Critical skills for the future of work
Scenarios for the future of workThird party research from many organizations. There are many organizations concerned with the skills for the future of work, from academic organizations like MIT, economic organizations like the World Economic Forum and government organizations like
MIT Work of the Future
World Economic Forum Preparing for the Future of Work
Canada Future Skills Centre
How will you learn and apply these critical skills?
A list of skills for the future of work is not particularly useful. What matters is how we will acquire these skills and then put them to work, as individuals and on teams. Here are four approaches to skill acquisition and application that may be of use. In our skill research we will try to call out each of these dimensions to help you build real expertise. They are also behind the design principles used in the Ibbaka Talent Platform.
Many of the critical skills have a social dimension - learn together: As many organizations shift from hierarchical organization design to the team of teams model the skills used to work on teams have become more important. Looking through our initial list, Connections, Conversation, Empathy and perhaps Learning and Play all have important social dimensions. They are best learned though team interactions. Construct social learning environments such as reading circles, communities of practice and exploratory teams.
If it is a critical skill you can never fully master it - keep on learning - Critical skills have depth, or as the Japanese say “oku ga fukai” (there is internal depth). Mastery is not a state but an ongoing quest. This means one has to always work to extend, deepen and connect one’s practice, and at the same time, make it new. A real expert can bring a beginner’s mind to their learning and work. Perhaps cultivating a Beginner’s Mind is a critical skill in its own right!
Skills connect - link one skill to another - Skills become versatile and gain depth by connecting to other skills. Think of something you are good at, perhaps cooking. There are many skills that can connect to cooking and give it greater depth or open up new possibilities: gardening, nutrition, food chemistry, husbandry, history, visual design. One does not need to be expert in these connected skills for them to add depth to the meals prepared.
Skills connect us - find people with complementary skills - There are two ways that skills can connect us. Skills often represent interests, and a skill or cluster of skills are often at the center of a community of practice. Deep friendships can be built in these communities. Two that people at Ibbaka are active in are Design Thinking, Talent Transformation and Pricing.
Birds of a feather may flock together, but opposites attract. One of the most important skill concepts is complementary skills. Complementary skills are often uses together but are seldom found together in the same person. Some technical examples are UI designer and Front End Engineer. To go back to cooking, the grill chef and pastry chef have very different skills but you need both to have a great restaurant.
Finding and working with people who have complementary skills to your own is critical to developing many critical skills.
What are the critical skills for the future of work?
Below are a list of skills we have explored in depth to date.
Connections - Foundational
Conversation - Social
Critical Thinking - Foundational
Empathy - Social
Learning - Foundational
Play - Foundational
Problem Solving - Foundational
Reflection - Foundational
Sketching - Foundational
Note that Ibbaka’s default skill categories are as follows:
Foundational - the skills used to build other skills
Social - the skills used to work with other people
Business (Organizational) - skills used to conduct business and operate an organization
Technical - the classic STEM skills (Science, Technology, Engineering and (Applied) Math)
Design - skills used in developing new design and solutions
Tool - the actual tools used to carry out Business, Technical and Design work
Domain - broad areas of knowledge and culture
Where do I learn more about critical skills?
Here are some critical skills we are exploring:
Abstraction - Foundational
Coaching - Social
Community Curation - Social
Inference - Foundational
Observational Learning - Foundational
Sense Making - Foundational
Writing - Foundational
Want us to cover a skill that is not on the list? Join us for a conversation about the critical skills we will all need to adapt to the future of work.
