Newsletter - The One Thing, Capabilities and The Corporate Ladder

Attributes Needed By People And Organizations

Welcome to the 28th edition of our Skills For the Future of Work Newsletter!

As ever, it's a skills tip, followed by an insight, and our favourite new thing. We think you'll like this one, so let's dive right in!

The Tip - The One Thing

Video Length: 1m 24s

Animated Paul is back, and this time he's looking at how difficult it can be to make regular tangible progress when your work is unstructured and ambiguous. There is a simple technique you can use to help you with that - we call it the One Thing. Check it out in the video below:

The Insight - How to Thrive in Uncertainty

Unemployment in many parts of the world is quite low right now, but that overall measure is hiding another factor - work itself is changing, and changing fast. If you plan to be in the workforce for the next 5 years at least, you will likely see vast changes in what is expected of you. The what, when, how, and even why of work will continue to shift dramatically, and will make many current job roles irrelevant surprisingly soon.

In a recent episode of our podcast, Dr. Chaz Austin spoke to us about this and described how employees can stay relevant in an employment world full of uncertainty. We also spoke to Matt Watkinson, author of the book Mastering Uncertainty. Matt's groundbreaking book helped us understand how to moderate deterministic thinking and how to change behaviors to thrive in an unpredictable world.

All this got us thinking about the most important attributes organizations and individuals will need as the world of work continues to change. Of course, some technical skills will always be needed, but here we are focused on generalized skills all companies will need. Our research indicates that it boils down to three capabilities:

Adaptability - Think of this as the ability to adjust as circumstances change around you. You need to get great at learning and growing so that you can always take on the challenges in front of you. You need to do this while retaining a sense of control and remaining true to your values.

Resilience - Think of this as your ability to cope emotionally and intellectually with threats and opportunities, while retaining energy and purpose. Life happens, and it happens to all of us in complicated ways. Resilience helps us keep going through that confusing, winding journey.

Digital Fluency - The world will change in many unpredictable ways in the next decade, but one thing we know for sure, technology will play a larger and larger role in the world of work, with vast changes coming in AI, robotics, and automation. Some of us will have highly technical roles helping to drive these changes, but almost all of us will need to work alongside this technology and use it intelligently to create impact.

What does this mean for individuals and organizations today? For individuals, we believe it means focusing now to ensure that you are highly skilled in these areas. Don't just assume you are, make sure you are measurably skilled. As for organizations, they should hire, retain, measure, and grow people based on these capabilities. If they do so, they will have a workforce ready for whatever is coming.

Our Favourite New Thing

Every few weeks you are likely to read new claims that a particular organizing structure for companies is superior to all others. The underlying theory behind these claims can be fairly compelling. After all, it would be unusual if structures that were best for traditional offices containing tasks workers equally applied to distributed organizations of people largely doing unstructured, ambiguous work.

That said, before you rip up your org chart based on a new form of management theory, we suggest you consider the impact any change might have (positive or negative) on your culture. We'll be returning to this theme in the next few weeks, but in the meantime, here's a recent article on how some people are reevaluating the traditional corporate ladder.

About Us

BillionMinds brings you this newsletter each and every week. But that’s not all we do. We also help employees and managers in companies around the world embed key soft skills to thrive in the modern workplace and get certified in those skills. Each of our Learn/Do experiences is less than 10 minutes a day and you can see meaningful change within two weeks.

We work with both companies and individual employees. Certification programs start at $200 and we provide discounts for those seeking work, alongside the option for current users to nominate low/no-income people to access the program for FREE. For more information, visit us here.