I believe the most important skill you can have is communication. And I admit I am biased, because I make my money with communication, but think about why roles such as mine even exist in big companies. Communications is more important than ever, for businesses for sure, but also for us personally, and today I want to focus more on the power of communications for us personally, and that has more to do with my passion than with my job.
So when I was younger, my parents taught me, you know, the art of hard work. I studied, earned good grades, and everyone was happy. Yeah, I had to present every now and then at school and at university, but it was never really the core of my activities. It was more what my success depended on. Then I had to apply for a job [?] the interview processes, and I entered the working world. And I realized: it was becoming more important to convey information than to know information. So communication, the way I communicated, had a significant impact on my success. Probably all of you are right now thinking about what to do with your future lives and what to study and what to work, right? So let’s do a little thought exercise together, a time travel. 20, 25 years from now, how will your work life look like? What will you be doing? Can you imagine yourself? Will you sit at a desk? Probably not. Will you type? Probably not.
Let me give you some pointers. Some technology developments that are already becoming apparent and shaping the world we live in. Big data will optimize our decision making. Artificial intelligence in general will completely transform the way we work, because all of the accounting tasks will be taken care of machines, with the highest levels of scalability and precisions. And all manual tasks will be taken care of by robotics and automation, and even performing actual surgeries, can you imagine?
And I'm not saying, "don't study medicine" or "don't study finance." Of course not. Because wherever machines take over part of the job, there is more possibility for humans to add value in a different way.
But what is this value add? What I'm saying is that this value-add part will have a lot to do with communication, in any job. So let's stay with medicine and let me give you an example. Artificial intelligence will be able to perform the accurate diagnosis. A robotic surgeon will then perform the most precise and least invasive surgery.
And what will the human doctor be doing? She will take in the information and form a vision, a story. She will then share this story with the patient, right, and discussing options with the patient so the patient can make decisions together with the doctor. Decisions he or she can feel good about. The doctor will address fears and concerns with the highest level of empathy. In other words, the human doctor will communicate. Yes, the way we communicate will become even more impactful.
It will be more important to convey information, and to charge information with meaning, than to simply know information. You all know that. You grew up with Google and Wikipedia. Facts are easily accessible. But the question is, how do we convey it, to use the power of communication?
