Sergey Filonovich, Dean high school HSE management:

What skills do you need to have to secure your future employment? Specificity new reality is globalization, the wild rate of change, and the tremendous advancement of technology that is weighing on us all.

It seemed to us that with the progress of technology we would be freed from the routine and would be engaged in more creative things that require serious intelligence. But it's funny: he is now wandering around Moscow great amount food delivery couriers. Because of artificial intelligence, a person is left with unskilled work that is difficult and expensive to do with the help of AI - it is easier to hire a courier. It turns out that the machines take away from us the work that we were counting on.

How to counter this trend? The essence of future competitiveness is based on a new quality of knowledge and a set of skills that a person should have.

Knowledge update. In the most progressive industries, after 1.5–2 years, half of the knowledge ceases to provide a competitive advantage. To create it, you need to generate new knowledge. A person is doomed to lifelong education. Whatever wonderful university you graduate from, if you do not update your knowledge, at best it will last for five years. After that, you can find yourself outside the competitive zone of the labor market.

The ability to forget. Many things that we learn at school and university are now changing very much. The worst will be for excellent students - they teach to death and forget the hardest. C students should not rejoice either: they simply forget, but it is more difficult to master knowledge.

The habit of acquiring new knowledge and its wide coverage. It is necessary to draw from a variety of sources a variety of knowledge, which is then uniquely synthesized in the human brain.

Mastering new technologies. For me, as a member of the Baby Boomer generation, this is the hardest part: I have a habitual way of consuming knowledge. But I need to take a cue from my grandchildren: they consume knowledge faster with the help of new technologies and teach me this to some extent.

As soon as we abandon the idea of ​​"lifelong education", we become uncompetitive.

New set of skills. What skills will be in demand in 2020, according to experts from the World Economic Forum? Importance critical thinking is growing, but its prevalence is not. Among the necessary skills appeared emotional intelligence, which was not yet in 2015. Creativity jumped from tenth to third place in five years.

And a mysterious skill appeared - cognitive flexibility. I console myself with the hope that it is inherent in the Russian people to a certain extent. Psychologists define cognitive flexibility as the ability of a person to keep heterogeneous and even contradictory ideas in mind and at the same time be able to operate with them and act. One day a close American friend of mine showed me a quote from the writer Francis Fitzgerald: “The mark of a first-rate brain is the ability to keep two mutually exclusive thoughts in mind at the same time without losing the ability to think.” I told him that this was a very American idea: “We Russians can keep at least five in our heads - our life is such that it different aspects are in constant conflict.

Cognitive flexibility in an increasingly complex world is indeed becoming an extremely sought-after skill that allows a person to maintain individual competitiveness.

digital skills. What do they mean for non-programmers? This is an understanding of what an algorithm is, why it is needed and how to use it. This knowledge is not at all widespread. We need to rethink: what can and should be algorithmized?

Now people have a huge number of fears associated with the advent of artificial intelligence: it seems that it can deprive us of all our work and simply destroy humanity. These are all horror stories - people love to be afraid.

AI will be able to set tasks for itself and create the beginning of the algorithm. Often reference is made to the invention of an algorithm that allows a machine to play Go. This game is much more complicated than chess, it is endless. The algorithm was invented by a man, and the machine, based on the machine learning mechanism, plays with itself and learned so well that it beat the world champion.

But a program that beats the world champion in Go cannot learn to play chess. As long as the machine does not perform independent goal setting, we can not be afraid of AI.

But this does not mean that humanity is not waiting for big and serious changes. One of our main tasks is to understand in which cases a person should be replaced by a machine, and in which not. When it is possible and necessary to algorithmize something, and when not. Each of us needs a fundamental understanding of what big data is. It doesn't mean "a lot of data". Big data methods mean that mankind has learned to process large arrays of several types of data that do not need to be combed manually first. The machine itself can receive this data and process it. This saves a huge amount of time and energy of a person.

In 2010, Google, one of the most attractive employers, discovered that they had a very high employee turnover. They combined feedback data, quarterly employee and manager appraisal data... processed huge amounts of data and found that the reason for the turnover: the wrong promotion of managers.

Intuitively, it seems that the correct promotion scheme in technology companies should be based on the technological competence of a person. It turned out to be a misconception: everyone at Google had a good understanding of technology. An ordinary programmer does not need a person who is better at programming as a manager. He needs someone who will set the task, help to resolve possible conflict with colleagues or a neighboring division, will bring people together to solve a common problem. That is, a person who has soft interpersonal communication skills.

As a result of processing big data, it turned out that technical competence ranks only eighth out of ten factors that affect the attractiveness of a person when he becomes a boss. First and foremost is interpersonal skills.

As soon as Google changed the criteria for promoting people to managerial positions, their staff turnover decreased by 30% in the first six months. Big data is good because it often gives counterintuitive results.

interpersonal skills. There is a serious problem with them: young people are much better than my generation versed in digital skills, but their socialization skills are declining, and conflict resolution is more difficult. This needs to be taught, also because under certain conditions digital skills cannot be implemented without “soft” components.

Everyone has the opportunity to develop soft skills. We pretty much continue to communicate face-to-face, with difficulties arising. Let's look at them not as troubles, but as opportunities for improvement. If you are facing difficult person, who is not like you and has difficulty understanding what you are saying, take this as a challenge, a task that needs to be solved with the help of soft skills.

Surround yourself with people who are different from you - this is one of the most important skills of the person of the future. If you are a nonentity in some area, in order to advance in it, you need to spend a lot of energy and a lot of time. But the result will not be very attractive: from insignificance you will turn into mediocrity. It's much easier to find what you're good at and perfect that skill. It will take much less time and effort, but you will turn from a capable person into a brilliant one.

The question arises: what to do with your limitations and shortcomings? Collaborate with different people. If you surround yourself with people who love to do what you hate, then you will be doing what you are good at. Why don't we do it? It is easier for us to deal with those who are similar to us: they are clearer and more predictable, conflicts arise less often. Therefore, most people, unfortunately, surround themselves with people like them, limiting their capabilities.

Check what you have learned in a week, month, year, if you want to build life on learning. If you dismiss this thought by saying that you are too busy with operational things, then after a while you will find that you have remained in your place, and the world has moved forward, and your competitiveness has sharply decreased.

Now more and more business representatives use teaching as an intellectual hobby. At Mail.ru, about 600 top managers teach in various places, not because they need money, but because teaching is becoming a form of self-education. When I teach my grandchildren, I myself understand something better. I am very motivated to communicate with them. The farther a person is from you generationally, according to intellectual development at this point, the more difficult it becomes to teach it. If you are up to this task, you will comprehend what you teach much better.

How to develop interpersonal skills? Mostly through practice. If you are not a very good speaker and you are dying of fear of any public speaking, the only way to learn how to speak is to force yourself to speak, in different audiences. I also did not immediately become a speaker: the first one and a half hour lecture cost me such energy costs that I felt as if I had unloaded a truckload of bags of cement. If something does not work out, the main personal strategy is to force yourself to do it, to overcome fear, fear, the desire to stay in the comfort zone.

Managing conflict is a very important skill. There is a set of theoretical ideas that need to be mastered: conflicts are not always harmful, they have important potential.

Our life experience most often leads us to become victims of the so-called cycle of conflicts and in conflict situation behave stereotypically. For example, if as a child you grew up in an aggressive environment and got used to fighting, then in adulthood You will think that this is the only way to defend your interests. If you grew up in an intelligent family, you were taught that conflict with others is harmful, then as an adult, even in a state of conflict, you will pretend that nothing is happening. This also needs to be abandoned. You need to be able to fight, to compromise, to be able to cooperate and concede.

Denis Konanchuk, Academic Director of the Moscow School of Management Skolkovo

Over the past thousand years, four major innovations can be counted in education. First, the emergence of the first universities in the X-XII centuries. The second innovation is the creation by Jan Amos Comenius in the 17th century classroom system that determined the development school education. The third is the emergence in the 19th century of research universities based on the model of Wilhelm von Humboldt. Finally, the fourth is the idea of ​​pragmatic education proposed by the American philosopher John Dewey at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, which became the basis for the development of project-based learning.

Today in the educational community, new global changes, and there are three prerequisites for this: the war for talent, the availability of higher education, and the potential of universities for the “silver age”.

War for talent

Universities, educational consortiums and entire countries today are trying their best to attract international students. These are mobile young people (there are more than 5 million people in the world) with great abilities. War for talent leads to rapid differentiation educational institutions. The appearance in the early 2000s of international university rankings (ARWU, QS, THE) made it possible for us to compare universities from different countries, which marked the beginning of an era of global competition.

The ratings have launched new mechanisms for the redistribution of resources in the field of education: leaders strengthen their reputation and receive funding. Academic mobility also benefits the best: according to research, masters, graduate students and professors today choose universities based on international rankings. A wall has grown between universities from the top 100 and all the rest, and every year this inequality will grow rapidly. As a result, a country that does not have universities in the group of leaders runs the risk of losing the competition for intellectual capital in the next 5-10 years and turning into an educational province.

Universal Higher

The accessibility of education has been the dominant global idea of ​​the last fifty years. The share of the population enrolled in school and higher education has increased several times. The percentage of people with higher education in the G20 countries approached 40%, and in some countries (Russia, Canada, Japan and South Korea) exceeds 55%.

The world is faced with a phenomenon when the educational level of each next generation is higher than the previous one. Today, many parents no longer imagine that their children will not graduate from high school. Having a university degree has become social norm and not a sign of belonging to the intellectual and professional elite, as it was only a few decades ago. Perhaps in the future, the industry will be driven by the idea of ​​a “new higher” education, which will be focused on a limited circle of people and will return the principle of elitism.

The potential of the "silver age"

Until now, the main participants in the education system have been schoolchildren and university students - their involvement in the educational process is 50-90%, depending on the age category. But if in the last hundred years the number of young people under the age of 24 in developed countries has been relatively stable, then in the coming decades it will decrease.

At the same time, we are seeing a significant increase in the number of people of working and retirement age — more than 1 billion people in total. They rarely participate in educational programs: no more than 40% of the working population and 5% of pensioners receive annual training. In Russia, these figures are even lower (15% and 1%, respectively). In the era of the knowledge economy, which requires constant professional development, it is people of working and "silver" age who can become a new resource for the development of education. The focus of educational reforms and entrepreneurial initiatives will inevitably shift from schoolchildren and students towards a more mature audience.

Waiting for the "avalanche of innovations"

Talent war, universal higher education and attention to older age groups require a serious restructuring of the educational sphere. What will be the new models of educational institutions that will replace the traditional ones?

Some experts compare the depth and power of the coming changes to an "avalanche of innovations" after which the educational landscape must change beyond recognition. Like it or not, can be judged on the basis of an analysis of the key trends that set the vector of changes for the next 20-25 years. These include:

digital revolution (horizon 0-5 years);

boom of educational startups (5-10 years);

the industrial revolution and the emergence of new professions (10-15 years);

change in the person himself (15 years or more).

Let's take a closer look at each of these trends.

Digital revolution

In the field of education, technological innovations came with a delay of about 10 years. The first online projects appeared here in the 1990s and were associated with the transfer to electronic form teaching materials. True, they did not have a serious impact on the industry. In 2011, second-generation projects entered the market - massive open online courses (Massive Open Online Courses, or MOOCs). It is believed that it was at this moment that the digital revolution began in education.

Today, the annual growth of the online education market is 27%, traditional - 5%. In 2016, more than 50 million people around the world studied using the largest online platforms (EdX, Coursera, Udacity, etc.), of which about 800 thousand are Russians. In addition to private projects, a number of states have launched their own national platforms - the UK, Australia, Brazil, and in 2015 Russia.

Why did second-generation online projects become a real innovation in education? For example, the course "Artificial Intelligence" by Professor computer science Stanford University Sebastian Thrun in 2011 brought together more than 150 thousand online students from around the world. For the first time in history, exclusive knowledge, available only to a few hundred people and for a lot of money, has become open to everyone and free of charge. The second innovation was the design of the courses: the classes did not last 45 minutes, as usual, but consisted of small video clips of 5-10 minutes each, thanks to which the listeners kept their concentration.

2015 was a new milestone in the development of digital education. LinkedIn bought Lynda.com for $1.5 billion, which redefined the learning process. The basis of the program was not mini-lectures, but tutorials, short video instructions for representatives of various professions. For several years, the world's leading experts have created more than 25 thousand tutorials, and to access them, it is enough to buy a monthly, semi-annual or annual subscription. A new type of educational project has emerged - a kind of "intellectual fitness room", where you can buy a ticket at any time.

The development of online education and its mass character is a condition for the transition to the next technological innovation - the analysis of large data arrays (Big Data) in education. This will lead to the emergence of new models for managing the educational process (individual educational trajectories) and active work with artificial intelligence (emotion programming).

If a country or educational institution will not be able to participate in the digital revolution, then within five years this will lead to the loss of listeners and income, and in ten years - to an insurmountable technological gap in the field of education.

Boom of educational startups

Since the early 2000s, in the field of education, financial resources have been attracted not by universities with a centuries-old history and brand, but by young teams of entrepreneurs. Ten years ago, global venture investment in education startups barely reached $100 million, and in 2016 it exceeded $3 billion, which is comparable to the annual education spending of individual countries.

The profiles of educational startups are diverse. For example, the most successful startup that raised over $300 million, TutorGroup, teaches English language over the internet. And the Achieve3000 project, which raised a quarter of a billion dollars, develops the ability to read and understand the text. One of the most striking examples of the new era is the Minerva program, which claims to train the world leaders and innovators of the future. Its founders managed to raise more than $25 million at the idea stage.

All new educational projects unites one thing - they are built on modern technologies, use a synthesis of advanced developments in the field of computer intelligence, digital technologies and behavioral psychology. The best educational startups are already competing with traditional universities for investment and talent.

The Industrial Revolution and the Emergence of New Jobs

New technologies are causing "industrial revolutions" that are changing how companies work. Business dictates new requirements for the competencies of people and the speed of their acquisition.

One of the main trends of the coming years is the transition to a "deserted economy", when most of the routine operations will be performed by machines. For example, robots are much more efficient than a human carry out the transportation of goods or the assembly of final products. And artificial intelligence is already capable of making accurate medical diagnoses or providing services to select the best hotel and flight deals.

We are witnessing the emergence of “pensioner professions” leaving the market. Most a prime example recent years- massive bankruptcies of travel agencies, losing competition to services like Booking.com or Airbnb. At the same time, thanks to new technologies, the professions of the future are emerging, in which intellectual skills and qualities are in demand, which help to make non-standard decisions.

The increasing rate of change is becoming another sign of the new industrial age. For example, LinkedIn annually publishes the top 25 competencies most generously paid by employers. Judging by this rating, traditional skills (say, knowledge of the language or the basics of economics) are losing ground and becoming basic, and the most sought-after competencies arise at the intersection of traditional areas and new technologies (for example, social media marketing or digital finance). It is significant that the highest-paid competency of 2015 — “distributed and cloud computing” — was previously absent from the rankings. Today it is no longer possible to build a successful professional trajectory for years to come, but the traditional education system is based on the principle of long-term planning.

The list of the most requested competencies will be updated more frequently. If earlier new profession arose every 20-30 years, today - every 3-5 years. The ability of the education system to quickly respond to new requests, to train specialists not in 5 years, but in 5 months, becomes a condition for the country's competitiveness. Most of the world's educational institutions have yet to find an answer to this challenge.

But large companies no longer wait, but act - for them it is a matter of survival. For example, they are creating corporate universities — there are now more than 4,000 of them around the world. Some are moving to the ideology of project-based and problem-based learning, which allows not only to quickly teach employees, but also to solve strategic problems. The most advanced leaders are redesigning the entire management system, based on the model of self-learning -organizations-. They use the concept of "implicit" knowledge - this is know-how and a set of professional practices that cannot always be formalized. The transfer of such knowledge does not take place in lectures or seminars, but in the process of mutual learning and interaction in the workplace. Teaching people to learn from each other is a more strategic option, but it requires breaking away from the rigid vertical structure that most companies are accustomed to.

Changing a person

According to scientists, the life expectancy of a person born today in the developed countries of the world will be 120 years. And it changes a lot. Already now in a person's life it is customary to distinguish three working ages, which differ in lifestyle, motivation and expectations from education.

The first working age (from 15 to 30 years) is associated with an active search for career opportunities. A person at this age, as a rule, does not have a family, rents a house and is ready to move around the world for the purpose of self-realization. Education for him is a necessary status and a “start in life”.

In the second working age (from 30 to 55 years), a person already has a family, children, a mortgage loan and elderly parents. Opportunities for changing jobs and residence are limited. Professional growth, the desire to gain recognition and take a worthy place in society come to the fore. Education here is necessary for building contacts, updating knowledge and skills, and building a reputation.

Finally, the third working age begins at 55 years. The kids have grown up, the mortgage has been paid off, and there is still time to restore health and find a new occupation for the soul. People are driven by the desire to pass on experience to younger generations, to feel significant part family and society. And education doesn't really help much.

Thus, each age requires its own approach, and only in this logic does the concept of continuous education make sense. However, the current system of education in the world is aimed mainly at the first working age. Now we need new formats for people aged 30-55 and 55+ that would take into account their lifestyle and motivation. These can be business schools and corporate training centers, for the elderly - " silver universities”, the idea of ​​which is becoming more and more popular all over the world. The creation of new programs for students of different ages is a task for the next 10-20 years, which the leading educational powers will be able to solve.

The beginning of big changes

The impact of all the described trends on the education sector will become apparent in 5-20 years. But this year we will see changes.

First, the wave of technological innovation will become more tangible for parents and students. New technologies will enter the classroom, mobile learning will become a common practice in the world's leading schools and universities. For example, mobile phones will no longer be banned in exams, as tasks will not be aimed at memorizing information, but at solving problems that do not have a ready answer. By collecting and analyzing large amounts of data, education will become adaptive - not a student will adapt to the pace educational process and education - under the abilities and goals of the student.

Secondly, given the financial situation in the world and the decline in the investment potential of governments and corporations, households will become the main drivers and sponsors of change. In international practice, the term “reform of choice” has already appeared, when the vector of development is set not by the regulator, but by people who pay for education. We're already seeing a similar trend in preschool, with the explosion of mobile educational apps for kids that parents pay for. The same will happen in school and additional education.

Finally, the boom in educational start-ups will continue, in which more and more countries will take part. Perhaps the best educational organization of the 21st century is not Harvard or Stanford, but a company that will appear as early as 2017. And I would like it to be created in our country.

1. For persons held in correctional institutions of the penitentiary system, conditions are provided for obtaining general education through the creation of bodies executive power subjects Russian Federation in agreement with the federal executive body responsible for the development and implementation of state policy and legal regulation in the field of execution of criminal penalties, in general educational organizations in correctional institutions of the penitentiary system. Peculiarities legal status educational organizations created in the penitentiary system are established by the Law of the Russian Federation of July 21, 1993 N 5473-1 "On institutions and bodies executing criminal penalties in the form of deprivation of liberty."

2. For minors, suspects and accused persons held in custody, the administration of places of detention shall provide conditions for obtaining primary general, basic general and secondary general education in the form of self-education, as well as assistance in obtaining primary general, basic general and secondary general education in the manner established by the federal executive body responsible for the development and implementation of state policy and legal regulation in the field of execution of criminal penalties, and the federal executive body responsible for the development and implementation of state policy and legal regulation in the field of general education.

3. Education of persons sentenced to punishment in the form of arrest is not carried out.

4. Persons sentenced to deprivation of liberty and under the age of thirty years receive primary general, basic general and secondary general education in general educational organizations of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation, created at correctional institutions of the penitentiary system. Persons sentenced to deprivation of liberty and who have reached the age of thirty, as well as persons sentenced to deprivation of liberty and who are invalids of group I or II, receive basic general or secondary general education at their request.

5. Conditions are created for persons sentenced to life imprisonment to receive primary general, basic general and secondary general education in the form of self-education, which do not contradict the procedure and conditions for serving the sentence.

6. The procedure for organizing the acquisition of primary general, basic general and secondary general education by persons serving sentences of deprivation of liberty is established by the federal executive body responsible for the development and implementation of state policy and legal regulation in the field of execution of criminal penalties, and the federal an executive authority that performs the functions of developing and implementing state policy and legal regulation in the field of general education.

(see text in previous edition)

7. For persons sentenced to deprivation of liberty and who do not have a profession in which the convict can work in a correctional institution and (or) after being released from it, compulsory vocational training or secondary vocational education is organized in institutions of the penitentiary system according to training programs for skilled workers employees, unless otherwise provided by the criminal executive legislation of the Russian Federation.

8. Order of organization vocational training and middle vocational education persons sentenced to deprivation of liberty and serving sentences in institutions of the penitentiary system, is established by the federal executive body in charge of developing and implementing state policy and legal regulation in the field of execution of criminal penalties, in agreement with the federal executive body in charge of functions for the development and implementation of state policy and legal regulation in the field of general education.

What skills do you need to have to secure your future employment? The specifics of the new reality are globalization, the wild speed of change and the huge progress of technology, which puts pressure on us all. It seemed to us that with the progress of technology we would be freed from the routine and would be engaged in more creative things that require serious intelligence. But it's funny: a huge number of couriers delivering food are now wandering around Moscow. Because of artificial intelligence, a person is left with unskilled work that is difficult and expensive to do with the help of AI - it is easier to hire a courier. It turns out that the machines take away from us the work that we were counting on.

How to counter this trend? The essence of future competitiveness is based on a new quality of knowledge and a set of skills that a person should have. Knowledge update. In the most progressive industries, after 1.5-2 years, half of the knowledge ceases to give a competitive advantage. To create it, you need to generate new knowledge. A person is doomed to lifelong education. Whatever wonderful university you graduate from, if you do not update your knowledge, at best it will last for five years. After that, you can find yourself outside the competitive zone of the labor market.

The ability to forget. Many things that we learn at school and university are now changing very much. The worst will be for excellent students - they teach to death and forget the hardest. C students should not rejoice either: they simply forget, but it is more difficult to master knowledge. The habit of acquiring new knowledge and its wide coverage. It is necessary to draw from a variety of sources a variety of knowledge, which is then uniquely synthesized in the human brain. Mastering new technologies. For me, as a member of the Baby Boomer generation, this is the hardest part: I have a habitual way of consuming knowledge. But I need to take a cue from my grandchildren: they consume knowledge faster with the help of new technologies and teach me this to some extent.

As soon as we abandon the idea of ​​"lifelong education", we become uncompetitive. New set of skills. What skills will be in demand in 2020, according to experts from the World Economic Forum? The importance of critical thinking is growing, but its prevalence is not. Among the necessary skills, emotional intelligence appeared, which was not there back in 2015. Creativity jumped from tenth to third place in five years. And a mysterious skill emerged: cognitive flexibility. I console myself with the hope that it is inherent in the Russian people to a certain extent. Psychologists define cognitive flexibility as the ability of a person to keep heterogeneous and even contradictory ideas in mind and at the same time be able to operate with them and act.

One day a close American friend of mine showed me a quote from the writer Francis Fitzgerald: “The mark of a first-rate brain is the ability to keep two mutually exclusive thoughts in mind at the same time without losing the ability to think.” I told him that it was a very American idea: "We Russians can keep at least five in our heads - our life is such that its different aspects are in constant conflict." Cognitive flexibility in an increasingly complex world is indeed becoming an extremely sought-after skill that allows a person to maintain individual competitiveness.

digital skills. What do they mean for non-programmers? This is an understanding of what an algorithm is, why it is needed and how to use it. This knowledge is not at all widespread. We need to rethink: what can and should be algorithmized? Now people have a huge number of fears associated with the advent of artificial intelligence: it seems that it can deprive us of all our work and simply destroy humanity. These are all horror stories - people love to be afraid. AI will be able to set tasks for itself and create the beginning of the algorithm. Often reference is made to the invention of an algorithm that allows a machine to play Go. This game is much more complicated than chess, it is endless. The algorithm was invented by a man, and the machine, based on the machine learning mechanism, plays with itself and learned so well that it beat the world champion. But a program that beats the world champion in Go cannot learn to play chess. As long as the machine does not perform independent goal setting, we can not be afraid of AI.

But this does not mean that humanity is not waiting for big and serious changes. One of our main tasks is to understand in which cases a person should be replaced by a machine, and in which not. When it is possible and necessary to algorithmize something, and when not. Each of us needs a fundamental understanding of what big data is. It doesn't mean "a lot of data". Big data methods mean that mankind has learned to process large arrays of several types of data that do not need to be combed manually first. The machine itself can receive this data and process it. This saves a huge amount of time and energy of a person.

In 2010, Google, one of the most attractive employers, discovered that they had a very high employee turnover. They combined feedback data, quarterly employee and manager appraisal data... processed huge amounts of data and found that the reason for the turnover: the wrong promotion of managers. Intuitively, it seems that the correct promotion scheme in technology companies should be based on the technological competence of a person. It turned out to be a misconception: everyone at Google had a good understanding of technology. An ordinary programmer does not need a person who is better at programming as a manager. He needs someone who will set the task, help resolve a possible conflict with colleagues or a neighboring unit, unite people to solve a common problem. That is, a person who has soft interpersonal communication skills.

As a result of processing big data, it turned out that technical competence ranks only eighth out of ten factors that affect the attractiveness of a person when he becomes a boss. First and foremost is interpersonal skills. As soon as Google changed the criteria for promoting people to managerial positions, their staff turnover decreased by 30% in the first six months. Big data is good because it often gives counterintuitive results.

interpersonal skills. There is a serious problem with them: young people are much better than my generation versed in digital skills, but their socialization skills are declining, and conflict resolution is more difficult. This needs to be taught, also because under certain conditions digital skills cannot be implemented without “soft” components. Everyone has the opportunity to develop soft skills. We pretty much continue to communicate face-to-face, with difficulties arising. Let's look at them not as troubles, but as opportunities for improvement. If you encounter a difficult person who is not like you and who has difficulty understanding what you are saying, take it as a challenge, a task that needs to be solved with the help of soft skills.

Surround yourself with people who are different from you - this is one of the most important skills of the person of the future. If you are a nonentity in some area, in order to advance in it, you need to spend a lot of energy and a lot of time. But the result will not be very attractive: from insignificance you will turn into mediocrity. It's much easier to find what you're good at and perfect that skill. It will take much less time and effort, but you will turn from a capable person into a brilliant one. The question arises: what to do with your limitations and shortcomings? Collaborate with different people. If you surround yourself with people who love to do what you hate, then you will be doing what you are good at. Why don't we do it? It is easier for us to deal with those who are similar to us: they are clearer and more predictable, conflicts arise less often. Therefore, most people, unfortunately, surround themselves with people like them, limiting their capabilities.

Check what you have learned in a week, month, year, if you want to build life on learning. If you dismiss this thought by saying that you are too busy with operational things, then after a while you will find that you have remained in your place, and the world has moved forward, and your competitiveness has sharply decreased. Now more and more business representatives use teaching as an intellectual hobby. At Mail.ru, about 600 top managers teach in various places, not because they need money, but because teaching is becoming a form of self-education. When I teach my grandchildren, I myself understand something better. I am very motivated to communicate with them. The farther a person is from you generationally, in terms of intellectual development at the moment, the more difficult it becomes to teach him. If you are up to this task, you will comprehend what you teach much better.

How to develop interpersonal skills? Mostly through practice. If you are not a very good public speaker and you are dying of fear of any public speaking, the only way to learn how to speak is to force yourself to speak, in different audiences. I also did not immediately become a speaker: the first one and a half hour lecture cost me such energy costs that I felt as if I had unloaded a truckload of bags of cement. If something does not work out, the main personal strategy is to force yourself to do it, to overcome fear, fear, the desire to stay in the comfort zone.

Managing conflict is a very important skill. There is a set of theoretical ideas that need to be mastered: conflicts are not always harmful, they have important potential. Our life experience most often leads to the fact that we become victims of the so-called cycle of conflicts and behave stereotypically in a conflict situation. For example, if in childhood you grew up in an aggressive environment and were used to fighting, then in adulthood you will consider that this is the only way to defend your interests. If you grew up in an intelligent family, you were taught that conflict with others is harmful, then as an adult, even in a state of conflict, you will pretend that nothing is happening. This also needs to be abandoned. You need to be able to fight, to compromise, to be able to cooperate and concede.

The text is written on the basis of Sergey Filonovich's lecture “Business Man Skills for a New Reality: How to Maintain Individual Competitiveness. What to do for each individual person” at the INNOPROM exhibition. The material was prepared by Andrey Permyakov for