Why policy makers need to balance priorities and funding to support people and communication skills, as well as vital tech skills.
Change is everywhere. It feels like the pace is accelerating. No matter where I look it’s hard not to see it. I wonder what life in 5 years will be like, let alone in 50 years. For the tech sector to thrive during this turmoil, policy makers should be considering core people skills, just as much as vital technical skills.
For those of us that want to build successful tech businesses, create services that people want to use, and gather high performing teams around them to achieve this; I firmly believe that we need to elevate trust and great communication behaviours in our organisations. Encourage collaboration and shared purpose. Value engagement and staff fulfilment just as much as technical skills.
In the old world of work you could largely ignore levels of engagement, staff were primarily employed to perform tasks to a set pattern. People acquired and refined the skills needed to perform these tasks and with experience were able to do so with increasing ease. This model requires less engagement.
People skills were less important because tasks could be systematised. Agility, adaptability and innovation are harder to capture in a flow chart.
In a period of rapid change, market disruption, new technology and political turmoil, a business and its people need different mindsets in order to thrive.
A workforce that is engaged, resilient, creative and able to respond to unknown future challenges and disruption will enable a business to thrive. Combine this with the right technical skills and this is where value is created.
Mindset over skills
In the new world of work I wonder whether the right attitudes, behaviours and mindsets will be more valuable than skills and information. In the old world, knowledge was power. Businesses needed to have people with knowledge gained from the best Universities — hence the annual ‘milk round’ where big corporations invested heavily in attracting the brightest and best from a relatively small graduate pool (remember that only a small % of the population gained a degree and overseas students were a rare novelty).
Is information becoming less valuable?
Today information is everywhere, we can literally access the sum of human knowledge at our fingertips. The world’s best teachers stream live to the world. Information is available to all.
So, in terms of businesses gaining a competitive advantage is access to information through a highly skilled workforce enough to give you the edge? Will knowledge alone help you respond to a disruptive new trend or a fast moving competitor?
This is perhaps why we regularly get feedback from clients that training they have invested in is not having the impact they hoped for. Traditional training is about the passing on of information and new skills. Perhaps this alone is not enough to make a meaningful impact in the business?
Over emphasis on hard skills?
This causes me to caution the emphasis placed on skills at the moment by policy makers and big business. I work in the fast expanding UK tech sector and the prevailing narrative is the challenge around finding enough good people to allow businesses to thrive and expand. The narrative is then taken up by policy makers and results in a focus on the teaching of technical skills — see the significant investment at all levels in coding skills.
This in itself is not a bad thing and is undoubtedly needed if the UK tech sector is to thrive and fulfil its transformative potential for the communities we live in. But it does raise a fear that we are using old world models, over emphasising hard skills and information and neglecting the non-technical skills that we feel are vital for gaining competitive advantage — because I believe people and relationships make all the difference.
Now, I would certainly not wish to propose that knowledge and information is worthless, nor that skills are not vital to a business. This is not an argument for a post-truth world where information and facts have no value.
Balance between skills and mindsets
We feel that for businesses to thrive, not simply survive this period of change then information and hard / technical skills may not be enough.
Value is created in the new world of work, when business can engage and motivate highly skilled people and encourage and enable positive mindsets, high trust attitudes and behaviours.
I’d love to see policy makers investing in resilience, effective communication and trust just as much as coding.