Top 3 Most In-Demand Skills of 2020
There is a growing need for REAL ways to improve:
- leadership & management skills,
- creative problem solving & design thinking, and
- communication skills
(The top 3 skills businesses want in the 2020 LinkedIn Workplace Learning Report).
Businesses need these skills because incremental improvements are not leading to real growth. To make money, we need people who can lead innovative solutions and tell stories.
This upskilling needs to be for everyone. From new hires up to the executives. And all the leadership training materials developed in the 90s won’t help. Staying relevant is key. Staying relevant means change.
We are no longer in the industrial era. Yet a lot of businesses are still using smart people to do “grunt work”. Robots are doing more tasks better and faster than humans. So businesses need to have people engaged in thinking, innovating, problem solving — something robots are not good at. That’s Work 2.0. And to think we are already at Industry 4.0, work has got a long way to go.
Engagement is not just about the annual HR survey, giving more frequent feedback, or offering free lunches. It’s giving people the space to try something new, something relevant that will solve real problems our societies face.
People want to work on relevant projects. Relevant projects solve problems. Problem solving makes money. It’s a win win for people and businesses.
To bring 2020 vision to businesses and talent, design thinking is a great place to start. It’s an innovation process that focuses on improving people’s experiences — because that’s how we live, through experiences, social interactions, and not non-human things.
The best thing about design thinking is, it’s relevant for everyone, not just designers.
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