Dr. Cj Meadows outlines three pillars leaders need by 2030: Doing, Thinking, and Being. Design-thinking firms show 60% higher shareholder value, and US burnout costs $500 billion annually. She recommends mapping workforce skills, creating development roadmaps, and using emerging technologies like AI-driven learning and simulations.
Questions this video answers
Doing: the ability to run today’s business while creating space for tomorrow’s initiatives. Thinking: creativity (identified by IDEO as the top skill). Being: (1) working well with others – listening, co‑creating, interactivity; (2) mastery of self – aligning personal design with situation, which includes interpersonal EQ and intrapersonal emotional resilience.
Competency frameworks should be revisited. Identify which deep skills AI can take over and which broad, cross‑disciplinary skills humans must retain, then build a connecting layer that integrates AI capabilities with human competencies.
Point to high‑growth, high‑valuation companies (e.g., Amazon, Microsoft, Apple) that invest in continuous learning; cite the 5‑hour weekly learning rule of top founders and McKinsey’s 10%/50% performance studies; start with small, quick‑win pilots to demonstrate impact before scaling.
Offer flexible work‑life arrangements and paid leave; provide resources to help employees manage home schooling or child care; reduce burnout (estimated $500 bn US cost) by enabling virtual work that improves satisfaction and productivity.
Design‑thinking firms see 60% higher shareholder value, three‑fold operating‑income growth, and 225% S&P‑beat performance. The methodology encourages rapid prototyping, early failure, and learning, which lowers development cost and risk, thereby fostering organizational agility.
Chapters
Thank you for being here today. So with a horizon filled with robotics, data analytics, and AI, what is it humans need to do? And what is it that you as HR leaders need to look for, not only to bring in these skills and capabilities from humans who will be working with your technology, but also how to develop it? So today we're going to focus on what those skills are that you need to be looking for and developing. And a new framework for management leadership skills. Also how to use new technologies to help people develop. And well, if you're going to do something with the design and underlying needs and something with technology, you probably will need to change your business model as well. So we'll address that and some action items for you. Alright, so it's a new age of coworking, and not only does that mean working with other humans, it means working with our technology in a collaborative fashion and effectively. It also means co-thinking, and we've got a new program, for example, called Think Plus on what it is that artificial intelligence can and cannot do. So what does human intelligence need to do and not do? And what does that mean for HR leaders? So what I did was this: I went out and did a good deal of research—articles, books, Future Skills Report from Deloitte, Human Capital Trends, also white papers from the World Economic Forum, and more—and collected all of what they said about what humans need to be good at in this new age. Now, when I collected all of that, it was pretty much a mess. So I knew there had to be an underlying pattern, an underlying framework that would make it make sense. And this is the framework that I came up with. I was very glad to see afterwards that it's very similar to what's being done by Harvard Business School in their leadership programs with Nitin Nohria and his colleagues. Basically, The skills really hover around 3 things: what it is that we can do, how we think, and our being as well. Now, don't worry about the details too much because you will be receiving these later as a handout, but let's talk about the framework first of all. So first of all, doing. We still need to keep businesses running that we have set up and keep providing what it is that we provide today, but we also need the skills for building tomorrow's business. That's incredibly difficult to keep today's business running while building tomorrow's. It's the dual transformation problem. And actually, it It does— people do have different skill sets, whether they're running a corporation or starting a startup, but increasingly we're going to find that everyone needs to do both. So today's biz and tomorrow's business skills both need to be developed. Now, anything that you're going to do, of course, has to be backed up by your thinking. Both running a business and building a business require a solid combination of logic and creativity. So these are the skills that have come out of all this research, both on the logical and creative side. And again, it's no longer enough to be one or the other. We're going to need to integrate the skills of both, even if you draw on a team for more depth. Now, the real surprise for me was that most of what's been identified as important skills and attributes for the future are not about thinking and they're not about doing. It's about be. And in some regard that made sense because if machines are going to take over some of our thinking and some of our doing, we're still left with attributes of being that are key, and if we are creating more and more new businesses, new products, new services, new whatever, new systems, new everything, they are rooted in being, and they will draw on interpersonal as well as our intrapersonal skills. Interestingly enough, this is not addressed very much in business schools. I was talking with a founder of a technology company, as well as a consulting company. And she was an MBA from a very well-known business school. And she said, you know, I really wish they had addressed some of this because now all of my personal flaws I see embedded in a company and I'm surrounded by them. Now, if you look at these aspects of doing, thinking, and being, the intersections also become very important. This is why I say we need to be holistic humans as managers and leaders, because the combination of doing and thinking is actually where innovation sits. Whether it's sustaining or disruptive innovation, you need to run experiments you need to go through the reflective cycle and learn. As a matter of fact, the top 10% of revenue growth companies show up as 50% better at learning, both experimenting and, and drawing conclusions and using the learnings throughout all of their new activities. If you look at doing and being, and this is the classic leadership space of inspiration, but if you're looking, if you look at the thinking and being intersection. That's where wisdom sits. And that's where a lot of literature says education is pointing. And this is what we do that bots and AI don't yet do. If you combine it all, then you've, and can cover almost everything, you have a very, very impactful manager or leader. And that's the person, number one, that you want to find and bring in. Number two, identify and keep. Keep, or number 3, develop in your organization. Now, if we move a little beyond just bringing people in and keeping them, how shall we help them develop? Well, technology again can give us some assistance. First of all, the future of learning is work integrated. One of the companies, the technology learning company that I've been working with, is doing research to pull together the investment in learning with actual work performance. So you can see a real ROI. So they don't just tell you, oh, here's a certificate because you completed the program, but they actually go into the workplace and get 360-degree feedback and say, is this person better at what they do now? Micro-credentialing and mobile and micro-learning— Nobius, my favorite company there— are going to be normal. Personalized and adaptive learning is going to be not just in LinkedIn Learn or Coursera or in your favorite business school. EdCast, is providing an AI-driven speed learning platform that companies are using so that when people come across a problem, they can speed learn what they need to know in order to deal with, with it. But this in the future, I believe, will be combined with artificial intelligence coaching. Learning will be simulation-enabled. It's more active and more memorable. And people will be using psychoneurotesting and counseling and diversity hiring, not just for your country of origin, your, your sex, your race, and so forth, but for mental diversity. One of the interesting things that, that we've come across in our Sydney campus at SP Jain School of Global Management, we've got a psychoneuro Leadership Development Lab and have been running biometric workshops. Interestingly, better leaders, when they're making decisions, use their whole brains. We can see this on MRIs, and this harkens back to a classic article from Dorothy Leonard, Harvard Business Review, Putting Your Company's Whole Brain to Work. Now, she was talking about HBDI testing, which again is based in neuroscience, but she was talking about the development of teams. I think we're going to move beyond the development of diverse teams into the development of diverse individuals who can have unique impact because they themselves are unique, no longer cookie-cutter managers. I've been doing some, some work and having discussions with Google on blockchain enabling a mindprint a little bit like a human thumbprint, whereby your skills and your attributes of being and your capabilities of thinking form a mindprint that's unique like a thumbprint. And over time it would change because some of what you can do and what you know fades over time. Some of it doesn't. And it can all be put on blockchain and people outside your organization can see it. CXS International is doing some wonderful work with national tracking and matching, not only so leaders of nations can see what is our HR like, but so individuals can be matched with potential opportunities, jobs or gigs. And it also suggests if you had these additional skills you could do this. That's useful not just at a national level, but also at an organizational level. Now, new models are emerging of the corporate educator partnerships, the new business models. Instead of having people disappear to go for a year and practice some skills in simulations and then come back into the workforce, learning and working will be much more Integrated. Now what that means is companies will be able to use the learning cycle not only to develop employees but to solve business problems, to engage in innovation, and to do much more. So it also means that the burden of education will no longer be on the individual learner but will be shared, and the individual learner will not be just producing a better mind but will be engaging in actual useful work. That makes an impact now while learning. So in sum, 2030 reskilling will require 3 things: new design, new technologies, and a new business model. So what does that mean for you? Well, Here's what you can do today. First of all, map your workforce against tomorrow's skills. Even though it looks like a lot of little items all over the PowerPoint slide, there are tests for pretty much everything— tests and certifications. Second of all, craft your development roadmap from today to tomorrow. See where the holes are and see where you're oversupplied. Now, it should be at the same level of detail as IT's roadmap. Map, because guess what? You're going to have to coordinate much more closely in future with IT, and you should be at the table making the IT decisions, not just taking what they give you. IT will not just support the development of people, but you need to plan the capabilities of your human and IT workers, and your IT should be on the org chart too. Third, hire and develop skills and plug those holes. Fourth, develop people in new ways. Join one of these corporate innovation centers to use MRIs, biofeedback, and psychoneuro testing to figure out what people should do and how to help them develop. Oh, that was point number 5. Join a new corporate education innovation center so that you can gain not only the development of your people, but also real business impact and a seat at the IT table. Now, a little bird tells me that that's been 20 minutes and we need to be saving about 10 minutes for Q&A. So I invite everybody to please Give me whatever questions and I am happy to share my wealth of ignorance with you.
All right, thanks for the great sharing, Dr. Cj Meadows. Right, so now we have come to the Q&A segment. So I'm sure you guys have lots of questions for Dr. Cj Meadows. So if you haven't posted your questions, please feel free to do so in the Q&A feature on the right. But we already have lots of questions coming in. So the question that has the most votes is, you know, what are the top 3 in-demand skills for being, thinking, and doing?
Very good question, very good question. Let me start with doing. Just general skills to run today's business and either create tomorrow's or create a space inside the organization where people can create tomorrow's business. That's going to be number one for doing. Thinking, I have to say, IDEO ran a survey of about 1,500 organizational leaders and they identified the number one skill as creativity. Top skills for being, I would say I have to give you two. Number one is working well with others, and that's going to involve a lot of listening, a lot of co-creating, a lot of interactivity. And the other one is mastery of self, matching who you are and how you're designed with your situation, finding a situation where you're appropriate instead of trying to craft yourself into a cookie-cutter person who you are not. That will involve a great deal of emotional resilience. So I'm sorry to come back to an old answer. EQ on the interpersonal side, but emotional resilience on the intrapersonal side is going to be absolutely key. Thank you. Good question. Oh, Daniel, I think you're on mute.
So sorry. So then the next question is, based on the model shared, do you feel that the current corporate competency frameworks by which we develop talents need to be revisited really quickly, or are competencies no longer needed altogether?
Good question. So Competencies, the way they have been managed in the past, they've been managed by way of organizational silos and silos of fields. Now, what I have found with new research on high-value innovation and high-value leaders, creative leaders, as well as artificial intelligence skills for tomorrow, Here's what's happening. A lot of those deep skills can be taken over with artificial intelligence, whereas the broad skills to dip into multiple fields, multiple disciplines, even multiple silos within the organization and pull together solutions that create value, that is going to be absolutely key for using AI and digital transformation infrastructure as well, as well as pushing the organization into the future with new— So I think you need to revisit it, figure out what can AI take, what will the humans take, and build a layer on top connecting all of them. Good question.
Okay, the next question is oftentimes employees are embroiled in the daily grind of work given the lean structure that we have today. How do you recommend HR to justify on the ROI on the training on future skills? It's a tough one.
It's a tough one. On the one hand, it's easy to say that, look, the founders of the top 5 companies today are not only polymaths, but they also follow the 5-hour rule, which is to learn about something 5 hours a week Most people who are doing the workaday job say, "5 hours in my work week, over half a day, where am I supposed to find that?" I think you're going to have to point to organizations that earn a premium on the stock market and have higher levels of growth and innovate better than the rest. And yeah, those are the Amazons of the world, Microsoft, Apple, a lot of the others. If you can make the case that the learning that they do, and McKinsey will help you with this because that's the 10%, 50% study. If you can make the case that doing this will push the business forward, then you can take at least small steps. And I would recommend taking some small steps, getting some quick wins, and building from there. But it's not an easy sell, I know.
Okay, thanks for that, Cj Meadows. So the next question is about, in terms of the employees who are parents, so how do you— how does employers help employees who are parenting with home-based learning juggle between home-based learning and, you know, working from home and reskilling themselves? Is it, for example, do they increase their paid leave to allow more parents to do, you know, to do upskilling?
Well, I love your question because actually I'm a working parent too. And while you're asking that, I'm thinking, are you really wanting to know about the grown-ups learning or the kids learning? Because my 4 teenagers, for example, are homeschooled. I think organizations need to become more flexible in terms of their work-life arrangements with workers, not only because people may— who are raising kids may need a little extra time at home or they burn out. And actually burnout costs around $500 billion a year in the US alone. I can't imagine what the number is worldwide. But we have evidence, we have new research showing that virtual workers are both more satisfied with their jobs and more productive. Now, if you give your employees some help learning how to manage their work at home and manage their child health situation at home, I think you will find that people are more productive, don't burn out, and more committed to the organization. And there is research to back that up. Okay, did that help?
Yep, that's a good, that's a good answer to that. So we have time for one last question. All right, so the last question is, how have you noticed that design thinking complements agility, and in what way does it impact company values?
Oh wow, one of my favorite favorites. As a matter of fact, there's loads of research on the business value of design thinking. I mean, companies earn 60% who adhere to the design thinking principles, whether they're consciously doing design thinking or not, they earn 60% more shareholder value. They have 3 times the growth in operating income, twice the return on assets. Stock performance 225% above the S&P. There's a whole host of, of research showing the value of it. Part of design thinking is not only sensing needs and designing new solutions, but all the way through the process, and yes, especially in the prototyping experimentation process, you learn to let go. You have to let go of your ideas that the team doesn't want to pursue, and you have to learn to let go of what you think is a beautiful solution that customers don't want. So the sort of flexibility and agility, yes, can be found in design. By the way, one of the value— big value pieces of design thinking is that it lowers the cost of development and lowers the risk of development because you experiment sooner. You fail sooner and learn better and more frequently. So what you launch is really well tested.
All right, thanks for the great insights, Dr. Cj Meadows. So that's all the time we have for the questions. The rest of— for the rest of the questions that we didn't answer, we'll be sending the responses through email after the webinar. All right, so the presentation handouts has been made available by Dr. Cj Meadows under the handout section. So feel free to download it and refer to it after the webinar. So thank you, Dr. Cj Meadows, and we hope that you've enjoyed today's webinar. Everyone, this will be the last session of the day, and we will see you for another day of exciting sessions tomorrow, and the first session starting at 10 AM.
All right, thank you everyone. Thank you everyone, and thank you, Daniel. Thank you. Bye.
