What do you see as the biggest skill gap in the finance profession that needs to be addressed over the next ten years?
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I think Storytelling is always a valuable skill it is one we need today. My thinking behind data science is I think it will become a requirement in ten years. I imagine storytelling will be treated similar as it is today. However, I agree with you storytelling is a very important skill and one more people should focus on.
10 years as a time horizon is too long. We have no idea how quickly technology is likely to advance in the next 10 months, let alone the next 10 years.
The biggest skills gap in a world of hyper-automation will be:
- A human approach to communication
- A human approach to solving real world problems
- A human approach to influencing and creating impact
Great point, Adam. Do you have any guidance on helping teams have more of a human touch as hyper-automation grows?
Adam well said and makes since that 10 years is a very long time horizon. Also a human approach to things will be more important than ever as AI plays a much bigger role in our lives.
I think in the next 10 years we'll have AI take over most of the technical aspects of finance (analysis and data work). Which means that critical thinking and so called "soft skills" - effective communication, persuasion, negotiation, etc - will become even more important. And the gaps there even more evident for those that don't keep up.
Great point about soft skills being even more important as much of the technical work is done by AI.
Data Science. The amount of available data and the expectation for data-driven decision making is only going to increase. As the amount of data and the number of tools expand, we need to upskill our teams to work beyond excel and start thinking like data scientists.
Glenn Hopper I tend to agree with you that it is the biggest area finance professionals will need to focus on over the next decade. I do not think we need to learn deep stats or Machine Learning algos but how to utilize the tools to be more effective.
Storytelling skills. Data science can be learned over time, but the ability to communicate how the analysis will impact the business and what actions leadership can take on it (The story or context around the data analysis) is currently lacking.