A creative solution to the digital skills divide

The pandemic has taught many of us to work in isolation. The recovery will require us to work in teams like never before.

The world is too complex, and changing too fast, for us to keep going on our own. Even the lone genius can’t solve today’s challenges.

Just ask Satya Nadella, the CEO of Microsoft and a big thinker on the future of work.

“To get anything meaningful done, you have to be able to work in teams,” Nadella told a forum of Canadian students, educators and employers.

He points to the demand for business apps that’s greater than the supply of techies to build them, and how teams of people with ”low code, no code” skills will be needed to bridge the gap. Often all that’s missing are “bridge skills” like design thinking to connect a bunch of generalists and specialists.

“Design thinking is fundamentally about empathy, to listen and go beyond words, to understand context and use empathy to innovate,” Nadella said.

I joined the forum to share a bit of what RBC is listening to, how we’re learning and what we’re looking for.

We know the hard skills are easy enough to identify: data analytics, cyber-security, artificial intelligence, among them. But we’re also focused on soft skills — we call them human skills — like the empathy Nadella likes. It’s one reason we’re excited about creativity as a power skill for the recovery.

We see creativity as more than an artistic pursuit. It’s the ability to combine novelty and value, to both invent (an idea, even) and find a sustainable use for it.

Then we need to code it.

Such an approach could be critical for millions who have lost jobs, especially displaced workers — bartenders, hair stylists, book merchants — with an abundance of human skills that are growing in demand.

Such a need is one reason we joined forces with Microsoft Canada and Seneca College to launch a short-order course in cloud computing, to help people from many backgrounds develop in-demand hard skills. Once on board, they’ve already got the soft skills to move from one good job to another.

Nadella told the forum this is a signal of the future of work, that we’ll all need to be continuous learners. Doesn’t matter if you’re a forester or a pharmacist, you’ll have to keep adding to your skills mix, and can do so with a foundation of human skills — call them learner skills — like critical thinking, communications and collaboration.

You might even call it a creative solution.

As Senior Vice-President, Office of the CEO, John advises the executive leadership on emerging trends in Canada’s economy, providing insights grounded in his travels across the country and around the world. His work focuses on technological change and innovation, examining how to successfully navigate the new economy so more people can thrive in the age of disruption. Prior to joining RBC, John spent nearly 25 years at the Globe and Mail, where he served as editor-in-chief, editor of Report on Business, and a foreign correspondent in New Delhi, India. Having interviewed a range of prominent world leaders and figures, including Vladimir Putin, Kofi Annan, and Benazir Bhutto, he possesses a deep understanding of national and international affairs. In the community, John serves as a Senior Fellow at the Munk School of Global Affairs, C.D. ‎Howe Institute and is a member of the advisory council for both the Wilson Center’s Canada Institute and the Canadian International Council. John is the author of four books: Out of Poverty, Timbit Nation, and Mass Disruption: Thirty Years on the Front Lines of a Media Revolution and Planet Canada: How Our Expats Are Shaping the Future.

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