Hey friends 
,
We’re back, putting all that holiday reflection and reading to good use.
Today, we’re diving in to the 10 most in demand skills you can develop by 2025.
Let’s go.
“Change before you have to.” – Jack Welch
First up, you may have noticed a new header name for the newsletter.
Things continue to evolve as I learn more about who connects with my content and what I enjoy writing about.
In case you’ve forgotten, the mission is to help 1,000,000 founders and leaders learn creative skills to make more impact.
Lately, I’ve been reflecting about my journey over the last 4 years. Going from business owner, to MBA student, to world traveler. And, now building again.
One thing that stands out to me is that today’s rapid pace of change is only going to continue.
The World Economic Forum, Future of Jobs Report (October 2020) outlined several key findings, including:
- Technology adoption will remain unabated.
- Automation spurred on by COVID will continue.
- The gap of job creation with ‘future jobs’ is slowing.
- Inequality will be exacerbated without proactive effort.
- More support is needed for reskilling and upskilling.
The window of opportunity to reinvent yourself is shortening.
Predictions From 2018
All of this doom and gloom reminded me of a paper that I wrote during Business Economics on the MBA with my friend Allen Tom.
It was called: Will Machines Replace Humans in the Workforce?
What we discovered was:
- At every major period of technological advance, humans have adapted and been able to rely on their comparative advantage from cognitive ability.
- Complementary industries spin off to create more demand and higher incomes.
- Job polarisation erodes ‘middle-skilled’ jobs like production and clerical (anything that can be codified). Interestingly, that usually increases incomes in lower-skilled and high-skillled jobs.
- Should AI and similar technology continue to erode and creep into high and low-skilled jobs, then there may be insufficient income to pay for all the goods and services required.
Our conclusions were:
- Several factors affect unemployment rates in the world and technology is only one factor. Many predictions made in the past have been proven false.
- Humans adapt to their changing environment well. Technology is likely to play a complementary role on improving the lives of people without eliminating the significant portion of jobs that remain in the realm of humans.
- While there has been a ‘hollowing out’ of the middle of the labour market, many industries are struggling for labour, for example, education, healthcare.
Our prediction was: humans will have a future with plentiful employment regardless of the advancement of robotisation due to our ability to adapt to any new situation and position ourselves for self-benefit.
Four full years have past since then and it has truly been impressive to see the advances in technology.
I recently tested ChatGPT to see what the result was like for creating content. I was truly surprised in how well it can match concepts, use an engaging human tone and construct an essay at pace.
That said, it is far from being able to provide the nuance, wisdom and experiences that humans can.
Time will tell.
Top 10 Skills Required for 2025
If one thing is clear, doing nothing means you’re going backwards.
And, given that as much as ‘50% of employees will require reskilling by 2025′, the time to act is now.
The good news, there is a lot that we can do to remain highly sought after and build competitive businesses.
The top 10 skills required for 2025 are:
- Analytical thinking and innovation.
- Active learning and learning strategies.
- Complex problem-solving.
- Critical thinking and analysis.
- Creativity, originality and initiative.
- Leadership and social influence.
- Technology use, monitoring and control.
- Technology design and programming.
- Resilience, stress tolerance and flexibility.
- Reasoning, problem-solving and ideation.
In hindsight, exploring interests, completing my MBA and finding purpose has fortunately aligned my newly formed skills with the in-demand skills.
The surprising benefits of taking a leap of faith.
Where Will You Strengthen Your Armour?
Which brings me to taking action to strengthen your armour.
In 1943, Abraham Wald looked at all the damage incurred on planes that returned from battle.
The army was going to add armour onto all the areas that had a mass of bullet holes.
However, Wald saw things differently. He knew that the problem wasn’t where the bullets were hitting on the planes that returned.
It, was likely that the planes which got shot down were hit in the areas that the returned planes weren’t.
So, to help more planes survive and increase the luck of the troops they re-inforced the areas without the bullet holes.
You might find these 2 steps useful:
1) Explore your interests and find your purpose. You’ll find me talking about this frequently.
Many people (including myself) chase money at all costs. Money is important, but if that’s the only focus you’re on the fast track to burnout.
However, if you’re wanting to play the long game and enjoy what you’re doing, while building a future, then I highly recommend going through the Ikigai process.
It is while on my journey that I learned about the Japenese concept of Ikigai – ‘life’s worth’.
It’s always a work-on. Here is the venn diagram I used to create my Ikigai 2.0:
2) Take action. Doing is thinking, and the more you do the more you gain clarity about what is working and what’s not.
Focus on moving towards your goals, growing skills and knowledge about what you like and what is needed.
Whether that’s books, youtube, university or online courses.
Your way forward will emerge.
“Change almost never fails because it’s too early. It almost always fails because it’s too late.” – Seth Godin
That’s all for today friends!
As always, feel free to reply to this email or reach out to me on LinkedIn as I’d love to hear your feedback.
Thanks for reading and I’ll catch you next week.
Vaughan
P.S. I just fully upgraded the Business Model Canvas article for 2023. Take a look here. Let me know your thoughts.
