What’s a key takeaway from both of these episodes? Even though many leadership skills are always important, Digital Trailblazers apply them very differently in the AI era. And then, several leadership skills probably wouldn’t have made this list five years ago.
Reskilling for AI opportunities
Every leader has a wake-up call. Have you watched a promotion go to someone else or lost a job as the number two candidate? I suggest digging deep into the underlying cause. You leaders will find the mindsets, skills, and leadership competencies they need as their businesses evolve.
I reviewed current AI opportunities and projected into the near future. Here are my picks for the five skills senior talent and leaders need to stay relevant.
Pre-AI – Change management was a role on large-scale enterprise programs. Many SMBs left this discipline out, only to find IT deploying new tech and employees underusing the capabilities.
Critical, creative, and analytical thinking – Last year’s World Economic Forum Future of Jobs Report says 70% of employers list analytical thinking as the most sought-after core skill and 66% say creative thinking is on the rise.
Pre-AI – Organizations hired strategy teams and management consultants to be the most critical strategic thinkers. Creative thinking fell within the domains of design thinking, customer experience (CX), user experience (UX), or marketing. Data scientists were the premier analytical thinkers, and many businesses struggled to become data-driven organizations.
AI Era – Critical thinking is a foundational skill for asking questions, writing prompts, and validating an LLM’s responses. I made the comment, “Does the LLM have the right context, or is it fishing in the wrong sea?” in the Coffee With Digital Trailblazers episode on covering critical thinking and digital transformation. Security, marketing, and IT operations professionals who used to be task-driven will find more opportunities to apply their analytical thinking to strategy, lead initiatives, and collaborate with AI on decisions. Creative thinking is essential for businesses that seek more than AI productivity gains and need to drive transformation in their products and services.
AI amplifies this skill’s scope and complexity
The first three skills illustrate how AI amplifies and evolves skills from the pre-AI era. The next two show two new areas in AI governance and AI agent orchestration.
Data and AI governance – The urgency to deliver business value from AI is outpacing many organizations’ ability to communicate and implement it. Data integration is a top AI challenge, reported by 78%, and 52% report that limited data unification is holding back their AI initiatives.
Pre-AI – Data governance was a compliance function largely implemented in financial services and other regulated industries. I advocated for proactive data governance pre-AI that aimed to enable data-driven organizations and data product opportunities. But most organizations pre-AI were focused on dataops and minimally addressing data debt. So while data governance existed pre-AI, it was a role and organizational function, not a responsibility or skill set, and largely limited to regulated industries.
AI agent orchestration – Who will coordinate work between people and AI agents, ensure that AI agents are performing accurately, and identify when a business process requires reengineering? AI agent orchestration is a new platform category, built on top of MCP and agent-to-agent protocols, providing a control plane for managing production AI agents. (Note: I have an upcoming research paper on AI agents and orchestration platforms.) But it’s also a new skill set required as more organizations deploy thousands of AI agents.
AI Era – Managing AI agents and overseeing complex workflows is a management skill for those overseeing operations, combining process engineering, analytical skills, and management competencies.
If you missed the Coffee With Digital Trailblazer episode, Reskilling Mid-Career Leaders: What Senior Talent Needs to Stay Relevant, you can listen to it here on StarCIO Drive, LinkedIn, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify.
