Here is an exclusive interview for Futuroprossimo with Cathleen Southwick, Chef Information Officer of Pure Storage, a successful leader with 20 years of experience defining and executing IT strategies for Fortune 100 companies. In the interview, Cathleen explains the profound relationship between the technology of the future and the human sciences, necessary to create jobs and goals in a world that is constantly changing.
The world is increasingly focused on STEM disciplines (science, technology, engineering and mathematics). Is it true that the so-called "soft skills" such as communication skills, empathy and observation skills will be increasingly fundamental in the world of work? Who will help understand the technology of the future?
There is a race for transformation. It is a digital and data-driven era, the trend is to rely predominantly on technology to solve certain aspects of a problem. But the real secret to success lies in a more balanced approach.
We see this in the retail world where consumers want different ways to connect with brands. Online through e-commerce or social media. Offline with more diverse experiences within traditional stores. Likewise, as AI-based chatbots have become a centerpiece of customer service, it has been realized that it is not enough to equip them with human characteristics. If a chatbot can't respond correctly, consumers will want to talk to a assistant in flesh and blood.
What skills will they need?
Automation and natural language processing can bring enormous benefits to businesses and those who work within them. However, they make clear the need for a new type of skills: the ability to solve technical problems in typically human ways. Thinking about what will be needed for the work of the future, in the coming years we risk focusing attention only on the STEM disciplines (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) to the detriment, instead, of a more balanced approach focused on the human sciences, on emotional intelligence and transversal critical thinking.
Skills such as communication, observation skills, empathy and logical reasoning - those that on the occasion of a recent intervention by the World Economic Forum have been called “fundamental” – they are the keys to training the next generation of leaders and preparing employees for the jobs of the future. A research conducted by Royal Bank of Canada highlighted growing demand for these essential skills across 300 professional occupations, with 2,4 million new job vacancies expected over the next decade. “We have detected a silent criticality”, it was underlined in the report “with too many people trained for jobs that could disappear, rather than being equipped with skills that will be increasingly in demand”.
Il work of the future: what are the estimates and numbers about it?
The reality is that STEM professions will outpace overall job growth in the near future. At the current rate, in 2026 they will have increased by 10,8% compared to 2016 levels. In general, according to the American research center Pew, from 1990 to 2016, employment in STEM professions, including healthcare-related activities, grew by 79%.
Yet, automation has significantly reduced the challenges of entering programming and other purely technical professions. As a result, there is growing awareness that it takes more than just a focus on STEM to be successful in today's workplace. Even those that involve intensive use of technology and data. It could very well happen that people who do not have a strictly scientific background end up paradoxically having a decisive advantage.
With talent management so important in the technology and IT industry today, companies should ask themselves how they can attract and deploy the talent they need, and how they can provide teams with opportunities to develop and grow.
So what are the actions to be taken?
One opportunity is to leverage the power of automation to free employees from more repetitive tasks. In this way they will be able to offer a decisive contribution to activities with greater added value in line with business objectives. The benefits of automation aren't just reserved for large companies. An example is that of SMEs that perhaps only have a couple of system administrators. They could be enough to automate everything needed from an IT point of view for the arrival of a new employee, from email distribution lists to application authorizations and so on. It may seem trivial, but the amount of work required for operations of this kind becomes truly significant when they have to be performed manually.
The implementation of chatbot is another example of how to reduce the time spent on less strategic activities in a growing organization. The technology of the future is collaborative. For example, an employee can turn to a bot to reset a password or request a software license, with a decisive time saving for both the end user and the colleague. The latter especially is thus left free to dedicate himself to broader and more strategic activities.
They often ask me if automation means outsourcing rather than staff reduction. Neither: automation implies the evolution of the individual's role within the modern work environment. Focus attention on more strategic tasks and target employees for tasks that require superior and complex reasoning. Only a humanistic education can provide it, it is important not only for IT organizations. It's important for business in general.
How can you support the next generation of leaders?
We need the humanities today more than ever, recently wrote the president of Yale University, Peter Salovey. Peter said: “In a complex and interconnected world like ours we need leaders capable of imagination, understanding and emotional intelligence”. From history and literature we learn of problems that will recur and that will have to be addressed again, we learn about those that concern people who live outside our contexts, we learn to decipher the warnings and to form our understanding of the human condition .
All of this is essential not only for the next generation of leaders but for all employees. The challenges that companies try to solve are not one-dimensional. A renewed focus on the humanities can be a key ingredient in shifting the balance in your favor.
Companies appreciate talent more than ever. A quality capable of bringing a higher level of reasoning and operation. The most talented employees should focus their attention on what the technology of the future will be and on the changes it will bring to companies.
These are the fundamental aspects for which machines cannot replace man.
