Forever Skills

Table of contents

1. Cover
2. Acknowledgements
3. Introduction
4. 1 The Three Spheres of Change
   1. The Three Spheres of Change™
   2. Future fears
   3. Embracing new opportunities
   4. Re-thinking education and training
   5. The three key areas of Forever Skills
5. Part 1 Creativity Skills
   1. 2 Insight
      1. The lure of data
      2. 1 Learn to read the signs and look for patterns
      3. 2 Be aware of biases
      4. 3 Sit on the other side of the argument
      5. 4 Seek to understand (not just analyse)
      6. 5 Make meaning from the information you have gathered
   2. 3 Conversion
      1. 1 Look for the big themes
      2. 2 Transfer, mix and macro
      3. 3 Be broadly interested and prodigiously curious
      4. 4 Generate unexpected collisions
      5. 5 Learn to repurpose like a child
   3. 4 Problem solving
      1. 1 Learn to love problems
      2. 2 Think in questions, not statements
      3. 3 Look for answers, not the answer
      4. 4 Do the work (creativity is a numbers game)
      5. 5 Fail well
   4. 5 Agility
      1. 1 Think of resilience as mental agility
      2. 2 Imagine an alternative framework or universe
      3. 3 Push beyond ‘The Obvious Barrier’
      4. 4 Challenge your own assumptions
      5. 5 Develop multiple senses of awareness
6. Part 2 Communication Skills
   1. 6 Influence
      1. 1 Know what you’re really ‘selling’
      2. 2 Align your value with their values
      3. 3 Demonstrate who you help them to be
      4. 4 Develop your emotional intelligence
      5. 5 Share your ideas, values and instructions through stories
   2. 7 Team building
      1. 1 Create a culture worth belonging to
      2. 2 Break down the silos
      3. 3 Diversify your team (and your inputs)
      4. 4 Build a ‘complete’ network
      5. 5 Connect them to each other (not just to you)
   3. 8 Trust
      1. 1 Develop some thought leadership
      2. 2 Nurture your community
      3. 3 Tell the truth with vulnerability
      4. 4 Practise ‘story-doing’
      5. 5 Make your ideas ‘pass-on-able’
   4. 9 Translation
      1. 1 Simplify the complex
      2. 2 Curate the information that matters
      3. 3 Use the appropriate language
      4. 4 Think in terms of education not information distribution
      5. 5 Make your ideas accessible, achievable and actionable
7. Part 3 Control Skills
   1. 10 Self-control
      1. 1 Develop your self-awareness
      2. 2 Understand that your emotions are feedback (and not always accurate)
      3. 3 Choose your mindset consciously
      4. 4 Control your focus
      5. 5 Control the controllable
   2. 11 Resource management
      1. 2 Place value on intangibles
      2. 3 Create value through a useful frame of reference
      3. 4 Don’t just manage quantity, measure quality too
      4. 5 Choose your timing … wisely
      5. 6 Assume a healthy margin of error
   3. 12 Order
      1. 1 Establish a sense of certainty
      2. 2 Strive for absolute clarity
      3. 3 Hold yourself and others accountable
      4. 4 Establish social order and convention
      5. 5 Be values focused
   4. 13 Implementation
      1. 2 Build engagement by starting and finishing
      2. 3 Hack your nature
      3. 4 Develop commercial acumen (then back yourself)
      4. 5 Detach from the outcome
8. Conclusion
9. Appendix A Looking back to look forward
   1. It all began quite a long time ago … in the Ancient World
   2. Recent(ish) History
   3. The four industrial revolutions
   4. Gender and geographic differences and similarities
10. Appendix B Today’s workplace trends
    1. Current trends and future focus
11. Appendix C Ten years of work and research
    1. Quant, qual and questions
    2. Language matters … a lot
    3. Skills vs traits vs roles vs values
    4. Macro trends and industry insights
12. The Authors
13. The Podcast
14. Index
15. End User License Agreement