The study «Future Skills» study by the Gottlieb Duttweiler Institute distinguishes between three skill categories: knowing, wanting and doing. Knowing is required to understand actual situations – what's the world really like? Wanting refers to the ability to define an actual situation. What direction do I want to go in? What goals am I seeking to attain? Doing narrows the gap between actual and target situations.
Jakub Samochowiec
Senior Researcher and Speaker, GDI
He explores societal and technological developments and their interplay. He is particularly interested in the stories we tell about the future and the underlying views of humanity and power dynamics.
About the author
Machine systems can increasingly perform tasks requiring knowing and at least the motor element of doing for us. In contrast, wanting remains a human domain that cannot simply be transferred to technology.
Learning to want
The ability to want must be acquired. But it cannot be scheduled at set times, like piano lessons or football training sessions, like when developing young people's talent. Freedom is required. Children need space to play, learn and develop. This principle also applies in the world of work where the freedom required often gets overlooked in the hurly-burly of everyday life. In the office, for example, we are increasingly performing tasks where machine systems are controlling us more than supporting us.
Going beyond our comfort zone
We often put blind faith in technology and use digital tools out of convenience: instead of critically analysing a task, we use ChatGPT to find a solution or transfer decision-making directly to an AI. In both scenarios, the ability to show want is found lacking. It is essentially being trained out of us.
Yet that's exactly the skills set needed in a world where machines know and can do more and more – good ideas and the courage to pursue them. So what are the interesting, relevant and pressing questions that may never have been explored before? If machine systems have an answer for everything, then that makes the question all the more important.
The full guest article by Jakub Samochowiec and other content on the future of work can be found in Mediaplanet's new «Future of Work» magazine (German only).