The Job is Easy,
The People are Not!
10 Smart Skills to Become Better People
A book, a video series, a podcast.
Informed by Prof. Loredana’s work on the skills of the future, the book “The Job is Easy, The People are Not!10 Smart Skills to Become Better People” is a collection of refreshingly honest and candid interviews about the realities of working with people and the smart skills necessary to become better people and leaders.
A fresh new perspective
In The Job Is Easy, The People Are Not! Prof. Loredana and her ASB/MIT Sloan co-authors bring yet another fresh perspective on rethinking the skills we need to thrive in today’s unpredictable landscape and beyond. In a world where leaders are expected to be polymaths and Renaissance people, dividing people into ‘generalists’ or ‘specialists’ is not enough – leaders need to be technically, mentally, and emotionally competent.
A new framework
In conjunction with the 50-year anniversary of the term “soft and hard skills”, we put forth a novel suggestion: it’s time to retire the idea of soft and hard skills, which are seen as two distinct sets of skills that are opposites of each other – and to embrace a completely new paradigm: one of Smart skills (requiring a high degree of mental and emotional ability) replacing soft skills and Sharp skills (requiring constant sharpening and updates to remain useful and relevant) replacing hard skills. When harnessed together, both sets of skills have a multiplier effect that can be powerfully transformational for individuals, teams, companies, and communities.
Top 10 SMART skills
Smart skills are co-developed in collaboration with humans as they require constant social interaction, engagement, and intense reflection. One cannot become “smart” in theory alone...
Through a series of ten refreshingly honest and candid conversations with everyday professionals in the Asia School of Business and MIT Sloan community, Loredana explores the Top 10 Smart Skills for becoming better people and more effective managers, that include, among others: emotional maturity, validation, followership, cognitive readiness, multiple perspectives, productive inclusion, and more.
The Job is Easy,
if The People are Smart
Learn from the dean who broke down in front of his team when facing an unexpected challenge, the professor who changed biases against migrant workers, the soft-spoken Korean MBA student whose secret power is nungchi and more. You’ll gain insights from ordinary people who face the same challenges we all face at work – but who have become extraordinarily skilled in practicing the Smart skills and navigating the complexities of working with people. And just maybe, armed with these insights, you’ll find not only the job, but also the people, becoming easy!
WHAT IS SMART X SHARP?
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This is the question on everyone’s mind: business professionals, professors, students, and parents. Especially with the advent of digital transformation, this question is even more critical: Is artificial intelligence the answer to all problems? Is fintech the domain we should all study? Do we need to learn automation and data analytics? What are the hard skills of the future? And do soft skills still matter?
The world today demands a lot from its business leaders: always be cognitive ready, be an expert in data analytics as well as managing up, be a great listener and know machine learning, master system dynamics and be a great follower.
In many ways, we ask them to be polymaths, Renaissance leaders…
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Soft and hard skills – that’s how we have been calling them since 1972. We used to believe that hard skills are measurable teachable abilities while soft skills are a bit fuzzier to define and hard to teach. But maybe is time to rethink this idea.
“By choosing how you frame and talk about something, you are causing others to think about it in a specific way. We can drastically change someone’s perspective by how we choose to talk about and frame something. By using specific words and phrases, we are “cuing others to think about it in a certain way.” Prof. Lera Boroditsky
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Dictionaries define the word soft as smooth, mild, gentle, quiet, tender, and weak, cuing us to believe that anything associated with this word fits these descriptions. But what’s soft about these skills? Navigating competing perspectives and cultures do not come smoothly; pitching and presenting projects are not a tender act; handling and delivering critical feedback is not mild; and dealing with office politics is certainly not for the weak. So why do we still refer to them as soft?
Analogously, “hard” is defined with words like firm, rigid, resistant, free of weakness, unlikely to change, harsh, severe. But should the so-called hard skills required today—such as coding, finance, accounting, statistics, mathematics, machine learning, engineering—be defined by these attributes? Considering the constant changes in technology, and the subsequent need for users to adapt, these characteristics hardly seem fitting.
Time to change Soft and Hard
Soft and Hard skills were defined by a US Army doctor in 1972, 50 years later, we must ask ourselves. Are the skills of the future still soft and hard? Or is it time for a change?
A new framework
Change the Language!
Change the culture!
Teach what you preach!
Practice what you teach!
Top 10 SMART skills
Smart skills are co-developed in collaboration with humans as they require constant social interaction, engagement, and intense reflection. One cannot become “smart” in theory alone...
Top 10 SHARP Skills
Sharp skills are co-developed with tools and technology. They require constant practicing and sharpening. One cannot say I’m sharp enough as these skills constantly evolve.
THE SKILLS OF THE FUTURE ARE SMART X SHARP!
“The latest generation of management students and practitioners need a full suite of smart skills to navigate the complex organizations and ecosystems that drive today’s economy, as well as sharp faculties for cutting-edge analysis of complex systems”
“Leadership is not a “soft skill.” In fact, it’s one of the hardest things to master… Mastering leadership is hard precisely “because there’s no equation… You can’t plug in some numbers and get an answer. Every circumstance is different, and it requires your own level of emotional intelligence, intellect, and interpersonal savviness to be able to get the best out of the people that you’re working with.”