The unprecedented pace of technology creation and adoption through the rise of generative AI, combined with the green transformation for circularity and sustainability, is resulting in an ever–changing definition of the workforce and the workplace.
Inventors of disruptive technology, which constantly redefine job roles, have an enormous responsibility to build learning agility in companies. This is a combination of skills enabling a person to learn, relearn and adapt to changing situations easily in cycles. It consists of both the ability and the attitude to learn.
“For a future-ready workforce, it is paramount to adapt to continuous change. The good news is that today skilling is possible, fast and cheap; and online learning can offer a level playing field for all. We need to develop the learning agility muscle very early on and make time to exercise it. Distinctly, when the leaders in a company master this mindset, magic starts to happen,” explains Shika Chand.
“With this we see the role of mangers evolving into that of enabling leaders, who are no longer expected to know all the answers but rather should be able to teach people how to find the answers themselves,” she says.
According to The Future of Jobs Report 2023 by The World Economic Forum, the impact of technological and other changes is shortening the shelf life of employees’ existing skill sets across nearly all industries. As a result, companies can no longer be passive users of technology or people, as seen in the huge talent gap in the marketplace today. On average, almost half of an individual’s skills will need to change across all jobs. In addition, nearly a quarter of all jobs globally will change in the next five years. This means that companies need to act fast to restrategize their workforce.
One of the top reasons that over 70% of digital transformation initiatives fail is because organizations lack the digitally skilled talent needed to support them.
Some of the emerging leadership styles in thriving companies include:
- What to focus on: From making profit to creating a sustainable impact. Remember, there is no purpose or profit on a dead planet.
- How to create value: From competition to co-creation by breaking the status quo and letting the suppliers and customers in.
- How to organize: From command to collaborative style where human-centric skills, which machines cannot easily learn, will have room to thrive, such as creativity for product innovation.
- How to get work done: From control to evolution, where doing the right things takes precedence over doing it right.
- How to show up: From expectations to wholeness, where in the hybrid workplaces it is about what unique values you bring versus visibility during working hours.
For companies still trapped in the competitive liability of talent gap, it is still not too late to start small by:
- Tapping into the underutilized potential of the existing workforce.
- Creating diversity of talent not just in terms of gender and age but also in terms of thought leadership, problem solving, analytical and creative thinking and technical skillsets.
- Bringing people and platforms together to enable lean cross-domain teams to thrive by collaborating faster without organizational and data silos.
In legacy companies, digital transformations often originates in the former IT-departments. This often leads to advanced technological capabilities being implemented at a slower pace in isolation from the business.
“This might result in the creation of new business or operating models. However, the redesign of business processes and organizational capabilities to reflect this new realm might have been completely missed. For example, in declining job fields of manufacturing industries, major reskilling and process innovation efforts are needed before advanced technological capabilities are introduced and not after,” Shika Chand explains.
This also means that new business leaders will be continuously transforming their companies for the rest of their careers.
“The question is, as a transformative leader, are you willing to undertake the organizational surgery required to outcompete with technology? What is here to stay will be the business agility you create that propels the company to continuously adapt to change for generations to come,” concludes Shika Chand.
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