SKILLS PODCAST: THE FUTURE OF TALENT UPSKILL YOUR WORKFORCE
WITH TOMORROW'S SKILLS—TODAY

Skills for the Future: Upskill Your Workforce with Tomorrow's Skills—Today

John:

Hi, Jonathan and Naomi, nice to meet you both. Thanks for doing this.

Naomi Sutherland:

Nice to meet you. Thanks for having us.

Jonathan Wildman:

Thanks, John.

John:

Okay, when you talk to talent acquisition folks or hiring managers or recruiters, many of them will tell you that they would rather fill open positions with people who are already at the company. In other words, they would rather hire or promote from within. And with this in mind, a lot of companies focus heavily on developing their employees and helping them build the skills that they'll need to take that next step in the organization. And that's what this episode is going to focus on, developing employees. So those of you listening who are responsible for filling key roles at your organization, don't have to look beyond your four walls for the right talent because they'll already be working at your company.

But here's the thing, we aren't going to focus on how you can build expected skills since you probably already have that covered. We're going to focus on skills that will be needed for the future, which a lot of companies aren't as focused on as they should be. And there's probably a lot of reasons for that, from this just not being on their radar at all, which hopefully this series will change that, to maybe it just not being a priority since there are enough skills to teach that are needed right now. So we're going to dig into all this with Jonathan and Naomi, but before we do, I'd love for both of you to tell us a bit about yourselves and your connection to this topic.

Naomi, why don't we start with you?

Naomi:

Sure. My name's Naomi Sutherland. I lead our life science consulting practice here at Korn Ferry. And I am especially excited to talk about this topic because I've been thinking about development and how people can continue to grow and learn and have the careers and lives they choose for, I'll just say, decades. So the topic of skills is particularly interesting because it's a little bit of a new way to think about how organizations can help people support their development and how people can take some responsibility additionally themselves for learning new things and continuing to have great lives and careers.

John:

Yeah, that's great. Thank you. How about you, Jonathan?

Jonathan:

Hi, folks. Jonathan Wildman. I'm in my 18th year with Korn Ferry. It's been a wild ride so far. But yeah, skills are particularly interesting to me because I believe skills are the currency for which individuals will leverage to be hired, promoted, developed, succession plan for in the future. So the better we can identify key skills that organizations can use and leverage to deliver to their customers, to learn, to innovate, the better we're able to support our clients. So it's a very interesting topic for me as well.

John:

That's great. Okay. So like I mentioned, for this discussion or this class, we want to zero in on companies helping their employees develop skills for the future. And while we've discussed future skills in past podcasts, I'd love for you to give the listeners maybe an example or two of just some future skills just to bring it to life for them. Jonathan, maybe you could take this one for us.

Jonathan:

Yeah, for me, I think learning agility is a foundational skill that everyone will need to have moving forward. It's almost the engine behind helping yourself be an employee that companies are attracted to and want to retain, so the piece around curiosity. How often are you looking for topics outside of your work sphere? How often are you reading about things that maybe don't specifically deal with your day-to-day? So this piece around learning agility, thinking about the blue sky topics that engage folks I think is really critical.

Another one for me is self disruption. And this is rooted in self-awareness, understanding where your strengths are, where your development areas are, and then being able to say, you know what? I'm in a pattern right now. I'm always going to the well for this particular skill. I'm always going to the same people for help. How do I self disrupt myself and use that learning agility to connect to new people, to learn a new skill and to deliver even more value back to my organization. So for me, I'm having a lot of conversations with clients around learning agility and self disruption.

John:

Yeah, I love those. Naomi, any thoughts about that one?

Naomi:

I have two thoughts about it. One is John and I have known each other for a long time, and listening to him talk about that just makes me smile because he is classic example of doing that. So I love watching you, John. You're an inspiration. The other thing that I was thinking is that organizations are changing. Our clients are going through change all the time, and those particular skills you mentioned are the ones that enable people to be ready for that, to be able to learn new things, to be able to say, "Hey, I see this thing coming, other people are talking about it, and I don't yet have capabilities. So how do I disrupt myself?" So these are skills that prepare people no matter what's going on. So I'll just echo what you said.

John:

Yeah, that's great. So back in my setup, I alluded to the fact that while a lot of companies are proactively developing their employees so they can grow within the organization, their development initiatives are a lot of times primarily focused on those expected skills, the skills they've always taught, but not as much on skills needed for the future. And I talked a little bit about why that might be the case, but I'd love to hear from you why you think companies aren't as focused on helping their employees build these, let's say, future skills as they should be. Naomi, any thoughts on this?

Naomi:

Yeah, a couple things. One is, listen, people are busy. Anybody you talk to is just heads down doing everything they can with what they've got going on day-to-day and too many people aren't looking up and organizations aren't able to enable the time people need to be able to think about things that are forward-looking and future-looking. And then the other thing is there's a lot of talk about the need for particular technical skills or functional skills. And what Jonathan just raised here for us are more personal skills, leadership skills. Maybe some people would call them soft skills, and they may be undervalued or underappreciated. So we're excited when we see organizations wanting to invest in people, the whole person, because it's a lot about who people are and how they come to opportunities to learn, to develop and to grow.

John:

Yeah. Jonathan, anything to add there as to why companies might not be as focused as they should be on this?

Jonathan:

I couldn't agree more with what Naomi said. I think we see things like empathy, collaboration, critical thinking being undervalued in organizations today. I also think organizations have moved to a learning on the job or development within the realm of work perspective. You don't see companies taking people out of the job and focusing on a future skill that perhaps the organization doesn't have strength in. And so, when you try to develop people within the parameters of the work they're already doing, you tend to just develop the skills that they're already using. And yes, you build strength there, but you don't have the opportunity to bring new skills, new lines of thinking, new ideas, unless you really pull them out of the day-to-day.

John:

Yeah. And what message would you give to organizations who are not as focused on developing these types of future skills among their employees? What would you say to them?

Jonathan:

I think it's a combination. I think learning on the job is incredibly powerful. People have the opportunity to see how capability connects directly to accomplishing their work, achieving a higher level of excellence, maybe gaining entry into work they never had before. But when you really want to disrupt, you do have to pull people out of the day-to-day, change their mindset, introduce something new, and that would allow the thinking to be jumpstarted in a way, to accelerate and that learning they can take back to the job and in fact, be in a better position to try something new.

John:

Yeah, that's great. Naomi, any message to the companies who aren't doing this but should be?

Naomi:

Yeah, my thought is about trying to do that early. A lot of times people will look at people as their call it mid-career and say, who are going to be our future leaders and how do we give them those opportunities to develop the types of skills they're going to need? But there's so much talent and these companies and looking for finding ways to give people experiences very early in their careers where they can stretch and grow. Particularly looking at as organizations are thinking about diversity, equity, and inclusion, how can they support people from underrepresented groups to have experiences? Because experiences or people are going to develop these new kinds of capabilities and skills and the confidence that they need to try new things, and just an opportunity for seeing capability where it might not be noticed otherwise.

John:

Yeah, I love that. Do it early. The earlier, the better. So as we speak right now, there's hiring managers or talent acquisition teams and leaders and learning development folks out there listening to this who might be thinking a couple things when it comes to everything we're talking about. One thing they might be wondering is we're doing lots of professional development initiatives and adding ones that focus on these future skills you're talking about, but it might seem unnecessary or premature to leadership. So how do I make a case for this to get leadership buy-in and even funding? Jonathan, what advice would you offer here to those folks who might be doing it but they still need to get their leadership to buy-in a little bit more?

Jonathan:

It's probably two things. The folks that we connect with nowadays are better connected to colleagues across the industry than at any other time in history. So for those hiring managers, HR, VPs, employees, listening, I would connect to friends in the industry. Talk to a competitor. Talk about what's happening elsewhere, and then use that data to go back to your leadership and say, "Listen, I was just talking to so-and-so at so-and-so, and they're actually already focused on learning agility. They're already talking about digital savvy in a stronger way than we are today. So perhaps we need to get on the ball and start putting in place something to help us there." So I think that's a big one.

Another one is around impact analysis. So after you complete a project or a piece of work and you do a postmortem, think back and see the challenges, see the opportunities where something could've gone better, and then identify those skills that would've allowed a higher level of performance for the particular team. And that data can really sway leadership as well.

John:

Yeah, that's a great point. And obviously getting leadership to see the value is one thing, but another thing our listeners might be wondering is about the employees themselves and how they can get them excited about development initiatives that they might think aren't necessary for them.

Naomi, I'm wondering, what should the listeners do to make them understand, to make the employees understand how important this is and how it's going to benefit them?

Naomi:

You know what, I think employees are actually hungry for development. I think people want to learn. They want to grow. They want to believe that their organization believes in them. So I think helping to communicate those messages is really valuable. We also said that people are really busy, but that you can learn on the job. And so certainly taking the time to take an outside course might be a challenge, but a lot of times people will do that if they understand that it's available. We talk to people all the time that don't realize what their companies have that they could access. So I think making the assumption that people are interested in their own development as well, and helping them see what's available, and then supporting them and giving them access. I think this idea of a shared responsibility is where you can get people engaged and companies excited.

John:

Yeah, that's great. Jonathan, any thoughts about how the listeners might get employees on board or excited or even thinking about future skills versus the everyday now skills?

Jonathan:

Yeah, I think folks should realize that this concept around above replacement is creeping its way into the industry more and more. So it's a concept borrowed from baseball, and it essentially means, how much value does a particular player add to my team over and above the average player available at that position?

So if you think about your CFO, for example, and I'm not picking on CFOs, but it's just in my example, if your CFO has a particular set of skills, and that's how... Again, that's the currency, that's what we've been talking about. If you think about the skills that that CFO has, obviously a list of technical skills, but if they're missing collaboration, if they're missing empathy or critical thinking, that company could go to the market and find a CFO that's more valuable than that individual because they have that particular set of skills. And skills are the way in which companies are thinking about this. It's not just skills though, it's about motivation. It's about mindset. It's about that curiosity piece that we were talking about earlier.

So this whole concept of how easily replaceable am I and is someone in the market building skills and capabilities that perhaps I'm not thinking about, that is the trigger. That is the motivation perhaps to start thinking about this more and more.

John:

Well, this has been fantastic, but before we go, is there anything maybe we didn't discuss when it comes to this topic maybe that we should have? Maybe a question I should've asked that I didn't? I'll open that up to either one of you.

Jonathan:

Yeah, I have one thought there. I think we have to remember that the vast majority of skills that we think are important today will be unimportant and easily replaceable in five years, 10 years, the further we go out. So skills iteration is a really important thing. And that essentially means the more people get into a room, sit across from one another and talk about how things are going, how things are performing, what's missing, what skills could we add to our organization that allows the organization to perform even better, that iteration piece is incredibly important right now. The more we do it, the more things we'll uncover that we didn't think about before, and the better prepared our organization could be to compete and win in the market.

John:

Yeah, that's great advice. Well, Jonathan and Naomi, thanks so much for coming on. We appreciate this.

Jonathan:

Thank you, John.

Naomi:

Thanks for having us.

John:

All right, so for all of you out there listening, we hope this not only made the case for why building future skills should be a priority, but also armed you maybe with some strategies and approaches that will help you make the case inside of your organization.

Thank you again, Jonathan and Naomi, and thanks, everyone, for listening.