Covid-19: Critical skills required to navigate business through unfamiliar global landscape

COVID-19

CRITICAL SKILLS REQUIRED TO NAVIGATE BUSINESS

THROUGH UNFAMILIAR GLOBAL LANDSCAPE

Dear employer

The ever changing global business environment necessitates regular re-evaluation of the critical skills required to be successful and sustainable in business. Although this is always the case, this truth applies so much more as we enter the completely unchartered terrain brought upon us by Covid-19.

During the course of the last decades, the advent of the fourth industrial revolution and the incredible advancements in technology dictated the kind of skills required to navigate business within that context. Covid-19 is presenting the world with a new challenge, for which a different set of skills are required.

Covid-19 is confronting the world, not only with a massive health challenge, but perhaps the biggest and most intricate business/financial challenge since the Great Depression in the 1930s.

The World Economic Forum’s (WEF) top ten critical skills for 2020 seems spot-on, especially now that we are in anything but ‘business-as-usual’ territory:

• complex problem solving;
• critical thinking;
• creativity;
• people management;
• coordinating with others;
• emotional intelligence;
• judgement and decision making;
• service orientation;
• negotiation; and
• cognitive flexibility.

What will the world look like when this is over? Nobody knows. What we do know is that it will be very different.

Regards

We are all in this together.
Privileged and challenged to be South African.