5 Skills You Need in the Digital Age

(This article originally appeared in Ambition, AMBA’s thought leadership publication – in print and online – and has been republished on this website with the permission of AMBA.)

Success in the Digital Age requires ‘outsmarting’ evolving technology and remaining relevant through continuous learning and reinvention, or ‘Hyper-Learning’, says UVA Darden School of Business Professor, Edward D Hess

The Digital Age will fundamentally change how we work and how we live. The continuing advance of AI, biotechnology, nanotechnology, virtual and augmented reality, quantum computing, and big data will lead to new knowledge creation at a much faster pace, and it will result in significantly more automation of jobs.

McKinsey has predicted that, by 2030, more than 25 million jobs in the US will be automated in its 2019 report, ‘The future of work in America: People and places, today and tomorrow’. Earlier research, from Oxford University in 2013 – entitled ‘The future of employment: How susceptible are jobs to computerisation?’ – predicted that there is a high probability that 47% of US jobs (80 million) will be automated in the next 10 years or so. Automation will occur in all types of jobs, including professional jobs — law, accounting, management, consulting, medical, and so on. Degrees will not necessarily protect you. Automation of this magnitude raises the obvious question of how do we human beings stay relevant in the workplace as technology becomes smarter and smarter? How do we ‘outsmart’ the technology?

We outsmart the technology by being smart in ways that differentiate us from the technology.

At least for the near future, those ways involve:

• Thinking differently: creative, imaginative, and innovative thinking; higher-order critical thinking including making decisions in environments with lots of uncertainty and little data; exploring the unknown by creating and doing experiments; and making moral judgments.
• Emotionally connecting and relating with other human beings in positive ways: ultimately, our key uniqueness as human beings will be our emotional abilities to connect and emotionally engage in positive ways with other human beings. That will require both high emotional intelligence and ‘Otherness’ – the ability to build caring, trusting, and compassionate relationships with others.
• The ability to perform trade services that require complex problem identification, iterative problem solving and lots of manual dexterity.

Notice – I did not say that knowing more content than the smart machines will be an advantage. No human being will know anywhere near as much knowledge as a smart machine will know in the Digital Age.

What will be key is our ‘how to’ skills: how to think in different ways; how to manage our emotions and create positive emotional connections with others; how to go into the unknown and figure out what is possible; and how to continuously learn, unlearn, and relearn.

Do you remember when you learned to ride a bicycle? Think back to that time. How did you feel? Scared? Excited? Both? What did you do? My guess is someone held the bike and helped you get on it or the bicycle had training wheels and you got on by yourself.

How did you learn to ride that bicycle? My guess is you started trying to make it move. And my guess is you fell off the bicycle many times. Then what did you do? I venture to guess that it took courage, iterative learning (trying to ride, falling off, learning from your fall), and resilience – getting up and trying to ride the bicycle again, considering what you learned. Young children’s days are filled with exploration and discovery, experimenting in the unknown, and learning through trial and error. That will be the way many of us spend our days in the Digital Age.

Technology will continuously evolve and advance. That means that the specific job you have today is not likely to be the job you will have in five to 10 years. Leading thinker and futurist, Yuval Noah Harari stresses in his 2018 book, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century: ‘Change itself is the only certainty… To stay relevant – not just economically, but above all socially – you will need the ability to constantly learn and to reinvent yourself… As strangeness becomes the new normal, your past experiences, as well as the past experiences of the whole of humanity, will become less reliable guides.’

That continuous learning and reinvention is what I call ‘Hyper-Learning’ — continuous high-quality learning, unlearning, and relearning at the speed of change. By ‘hyper’, I reference the original Greek meaning of ‘over’ or ‘above’. Hyper-Learning is learning that is over and above what is typical.

Humans have two main obstacles to becoming hyper-learners. First, our wiring. The science of adult learning clearly shows that our brains and minds are geared to be efficient. We seek confirmation of what we already believe and affirmation of our egos; and we strive for cohesiveness of our stories about how our world works. We operate much of the time on autopilot. We are creatures of habit, and as for our thinking, psychologist and Nobel Laureate, Daniel Kahneman, says in his 2011 book, Thinking, Fast and Slow; ‘Laziness is built deep into our nature’.

And we all struggle to manage the two big inhibitors of human learning: Our egos and our fears. Ego can get in the way of learning because it can lead to close-mindedness, arrogance, defining oneself by what one knows, poor listening skills, and ineffective collaboration. Fear hinders learning when people are fearful of making mistakes, fearful of being wrong, fearful that they will look bad or not be liked, or fearful that they will offend someone by asking hard questions.

1: Take ownership of and manage your ‘inner world’.

Your inner world includes your ego, mind, body, and emotions. Understanding how your inner world operates and learning how to manage it so you can optimise your hyper-learning is essential. That is not an easy task. But it is not rocket science. It requires rigour, self-discipline, and the use of daily practices designed to help you achieve ‘inner peace’ – a state of inner stillness and calmness that enables you to embrace the world with your most open, non-judgmental, fearless mind, and with a lack of self-absorption.

2: Excel at ‘Otherness’.

The science is clear that no one can optimise their learning by themselves. We need others to help us overcome our reflexive ways of being. ‘Otherness’ requires learning how to reflectively listen to others in ways that validate their human dignity and to behave in ways that build trust. All of that requires positive emotional connecting and relating with others and emotional intelligence.

3: Adopt a ‘NewSmart’ mindset.

Unlike antiquated standards of what makes a person smart, optimise your ability to hyper-learn with the following perspectives:

• I’m defined not by what I know or how much I know, but by the quality of my thinking, listening, relating, and collaborating.
• My mental models are not reality – they are only my generalised stories of how my world works.
• I’m not my ideas, and I must decouple my beliefs (not values) from my ego.
• I must be open-minded and treat my beliefs (not values) as hypotheses to be constantly tested and subject to modification by better data.
• My mistakes and failures are opportunities to learn.

4: Embrace ‘Hyper-Learning Behaviours’ and traits.

Learning is behavioural. Examples of Hyper-Learning Behaviours and traits include the following: curiosity; open-mindedness; humility (a quiet ego); mindfulness (being fully present); empathy; courage; resilience; manages self; embraces uncertainty and ambiguity; challenges the status quo; emotional intelligence; stress-tests one’s thinking; collaborates effectively; Data-driven decision making; listens reflectively; trustworthiness and integrity.

5: Approach each day as being a continuing ‘Journey to Your Best Self’.

Have the curiosity, open-mindedness, and resilience of a young child; the courage of an explorer; and the ability to think like a scientist, and to imagine like an artist. And be a mindful, caring, compassionate person who excels at ‘Otherness’.

Those are the skills that you will need in order to excel and have meaningful work in the Digital Age.

Edward D Hess is Professor of Business Administration, Batten Fellow and Batten Executive-in-Residence at the University of Virginia Darden School of Business and the author of Hyper-Learning: How to Adapt to the Speed of Change, which will be published by Berrett-Koehler in August 2020.