Why organisations need a gymnastic mindset

In the current environment characterised by volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity, most organisations are facing increasing competition even as they pivot towards proactive planning and greater agility. Success and sustainability continue to be redefined.

The difficulty of managing at this time cannot be overstated.

Business leaders must respond rapidly and guide their organisations to adapt, in an effort to sustain operations, even as they manage the competing demands of technology advances, globalisation, leadership succession planning, customer preferences, regulatory change, macro events, declining return on investments and competitive pressure.

Managing these and other competing demands requires a gymnastic mindset. In a nutshell, what worked in the past is not good enough for the future.

We are experiencing an unprecedented rate of change, powered by the Covid-19 pandemic and the fourth industrial revolution.

INNOVATION

The way we live now and the outlook for the future, including how we do business, have clarified the disparity between those with access to technology and the skills to use it, and those without.

Skills gaps and mismatches present one of the world’s most pressing problems. According to an annual Global CEO Survey, 79 percent of CEOs are worried about the availability of key skills and, in fact, it ranked among their top three worries in the 2019 survey, which was conducted before the advent of the Covid-19 pandemic.

More than half of CEOs (55 percent) say that skills shortages mean that they can’t innovate effectively.

Meanwhile, 77 percent of respondents in the 2019 Hopes & Fears Survey say that they are ready to learn new skills or retrain to remain employable in the future but only 33 percent say that they are given the opportunity to learn.

The research reveals that there are three factors that motivate workers to learn new skills: statuses such as promotions or other recognitions, intrinsic interest; curiosity and opportunities to improve efficiency and teamwork and risk avoidance; individual achievement within a predictable environment.

How can organisations align to this new world, new skills paradigm?

First and foremost, they can reinforce the ‘tone from the top’ and clearly communicate that indeed, there is a mismatch between the skills and technology of today and what we will need tomorrow.

Business leaders can start a conversation by asking the following key questions: How and where will work get done? What is the right mix of human- and machine-delivered work? What is the right balance between contingent workers and employees? What will ‘work locations’ look like in the future? Are we building the right transferable skills alongside digital skills in our people?

How effective are our upskilling programmes? Should we rethink the structure of our learning and development function? How are we addressing short-falls in tech-savvy leadership? And, how are we applying what we have learnt during the Covid-19 pandemic and its aftermath?

By starting a conversation, business leaders can learn a great deal about the priorities of the people who work for them and involve their employees and other stakeholders in planning.

WHAT NEXT?

Through experience, business leaders should first drive the process of assessing the current operating environment and identify skills gaps and mismatches in their organisations.

That assessment will inform where to start and what to give priority. Then, they can co-create a future-proof skills strategy to deal with the gaps that have the most impact on their business’ value propositions.

These leaders have a critical role to play thereafter in laying the foundation for culture change, which is the bedrock of an organisation’s upskilling journey. A supportive and challenging culture will help to deploy successful upskilling that delivers the right learning experience and rapid results.

They should expect to evaluate the return on the investments that they’ve made in their skills strategies.

In the past, skills development might have been the purview of Human Resource departments.

Now, however, we would argue that organisations will only be successful in re-orienting towards our new world with new skills if they treat it like a culture change led by business leaders, including CEOs.

C-SUITE TEAM

Other C-suite leaders like chief operating officers, chief human resources officers, chief information officers and chief financial officers all must help to lead the change by setting the tone from the top and embracing this change themselves.

Business unit leaders and functional leaders, heads of transformation or innovation programmes as well as members of Boards of Directors also have significant roles to play.

Guiding and steering the workforce of the future is one of the biggest issues facing businesses and the world at present. Our biggest challenge is knowing where to start. Covid-19 has made upskilling more necessary than ever before; it’s clear that we need to ‘build back better’ with a gymnastic mindset.strategyjames muhia

Senior manager leading PwC’s People & Change services, EA