The Future Demands. TOP-5 Skills That Will Be Prized in 2025

1. Analytical thinking  

This skill is associated with information processing and analysis. Life in the VUCA world (volatility, uncertainty, complexity, ambiguity) is everything but clear and predictable. Analytical thinking allows you to break apart this ambiguity, objectively evaluate information, compare data, draw conclusions, and act on them. And that brings a kind of certainty! Now we cannot find the right solutions on the spur of the moment just by pushing our way through - instead, we must look for more sophisticated ways and be flexible in our approaches. 

A person's cognitive flexibility, i.e. the ability to switch from one thought to another, depends on how consistently with reality they see their situation. Ironically, we are also unable to get rid of cognitive biases, that is, the inaccurate perception of reality. It affects everyone’s thinking: we tend to simplify information, ignoring the details (for example, “they are all like that”, “managing people is difficult”) or, conversely, to keep the details in focus and not see the whole picture. The only thing we can do is remember that we have cognitive biases and check if we are making a decision that is adequate to the situation.  

For instance, a situation when a manager says that one of the team members is unmotivated is an example of a generalizing approach. As long as we maintain that, we focus solely on motivation. We start reading the “right” books, listening to podcasts on the topic, etc. And that is good. However, in this case, we need to investigate the details: what does that person tell us about their lack of motivation, what are the criteria for motivated work, what does that person do and what does not? Clarifying questions may reveal that the problem is of a different kind. For example, earlier that person performed better than expected, and now the manager counts on the “overachievement”, but the person's circumstances have changed. If we persist with the assumption about lack of motivation, the consequences will be unjustified expectations, incomprehensible complaints, a possible disruption of the partnership and undermining of the team spirit. 

2. Active learning 

If we talk about learning in terms of the classic "teacher-student" format, 2020 has brought many changes.  

On the one hand, the transition to online has created a new educational challenge for those who teach — how to engage, inspire the audience online and motivate them to more active actions? The usual control over the educational process was taken away from teachers. So now it equally depends on students' self-motivation and the ingenuity of the instructor. In prospect learning will become more automated, the usage of game algorithms will grow while the involvement of human willpower will decrease.  

Think about the winner of the Global Teacher's Prize 2020. Ranjitsinh Disale from India is not just a good teacher. He considers the needs of students and acts accordingly. Ranjit translated the learning materials into the language of the community where he works, facilitating easier access to education. He used the young generation’s strong interest in gadgets to his advantage. He set up QR codes to give access to poems, lectures, assignments. He also introduced a game element when children gained points for simple actions. Ranjit Disale created all preconditions for forming a new habit of learning by simplifying access and using interest in modern technology. 

People are not going to become more disciplined. But with the advent of technology, more tools have been made available to make learning easier and students — more motivated. As a result, trending among modern approaches to education are the utmost simplification, reduction of efforts, encouragement of self-study. To promote this, companies create the appropriate atmosphere and need. At EPAM, to master the new expertise you can pass any program, training, or participate in mentoring programs. Self-learning is reinforced by ensuring the availability of electronic libraries and subscriptions to external LinkedIn Learning courses.  

On the other hand, the requirements for learners are growing. An abundance of educational information combined with a lack of a strategic approach to your learning might result in a waste of time. After all, what does it mean to minimize the involvement of willpower? Basically, it means that the laws of influence that we follow and the manipulations, that allow us to join in the course due to its format, but not necessarily its content, will be used to create educational programs. This will promote the emergence of new interesting forms of learning and the improvement of existing ones. But if your goal is to dig deeper into a particular matter, you should always keep it in focus when choosing a course. Therefore, for students, it is essential to be able to determine the goals of their studies and the criteria for success. Secondly, in the case of self-study, the ability to build your program, choosing what is useful and necessary, is important as well. And last but not least, you should have a plan on how to adapt the theoretical material to real life. 

In the broader context of this skill, a person's attitude to learning will be crucial. The difference between the ways of thinking - fixed and growth mindset - was perfectly described by Carol Dweck in Mindset. Choosing a growth mindset, not only do you have to constantly learn, but do it in a constantly changing environment. It is a challenging task and you need to have internal settings for it. For example, we switched to working online. Some have adapted faster than others because they have this built-in framework of openness to new strategies in new conditions. Such people have a sort of default “I am ready to change and adapt to new conditions.” setting.  

3. Complex problem-solving 

At the Problem Solving webinar, we often observe that participants tend to solve those parts of the problem they know how to deal with. We have already mentioned the wish for simplification, for clear or quick solutions that have proven effective in the past, the desire to take the issue off the table as soon as possible, in relation to cognitive biases. It is also worth mentioning that the human inclination to ignore unfamiliar, complicated information creates even more obstacles on the way to complex problem-solving. 

Also, during trainings, in game situations, we frequently encounter the fact that people solve a local problem well, but do not see the relationships within the system in which the problem exists. A solution that is useful for a limited context can be detrimental to a broad one. We see many similar examples at the global level, in ecology, social initiatives. Understanding complexity involves the ability to see the big picture and the relationships in it. The more we see, the more choices what to do we have.  

But thinking is only one part of the skill. The second part is the ability to engage experts from different fields, to interact effectively within the group to develop solutions that will be environmentally friendly at both micro and macro levels. The world is evolving, the challenges are becoming more advanced for one person to tackle and the relevance of teamwork is growing. In the conditions of VUCA-world, the team result has proven to be more effective.  

In real cases, however, we are faced with the fact that it is not easy to forego the individual result in favor of the team, it is difficult to negotiate, interact, keeping the goal in focus and maintaining trust. Consequentially, there is a need for managers skilled in moderation in decision-making processes or independent moderators. 

4. Critical thinking 

In Ray Dalio's book, Principles, he describes a crisis he experienced, after which he started to ask himself “Why did I decide I was right?” as a way of a reality check. This seems like a good metaphor to capture the essence of critical thinking. This is a way of thinking that allows you to check how any decision aligns with reality, based on logic and understanding of psychological processes.  

Here are a few tools that can help you improve critical thinking skills:  

• Question everything that you hear and read, presuming it to be inaccurate or incomplete. 
• Remember that we see the world through the lens of our own perception and can sometimes fall into the trap of our own cognitive biases.  
• Take alternative perspectives: try different approaches or take the opponent’s side, especially if their point of view is different or even in contradiction with yours. 

Practice makes perfect: to boost any skill, you need to constantly use it. Not everyone takes to the idea when we teach to think critically in internal EPAM training. It is not uncommon to hear: “It is too difficult. Do you have the knowledge I can master in 5 minutes?” People lean towards simplification, things being done “quickly and accurately”. But to actually use critical thinking, you must first form a context, a request, so that there is a need to apply tools of critical thinking. There is a saying: “If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” If a person does not create an internal demand regarding a new non-standard situation that requires new approaches, critical thinking will not work. 

5. Creativity and originality 

This skill appeared in the previous reports of the forum. And we expect to see it in the future ones as well. Creativity is not something only people of creative professions - actors, artists, writers – need, but it is also necessary for everyday life and business.  

Using those same technologies, it is possible to automate routine tasks as much as practical. Automation implies that there are typical models based on which you can develop programs or program robots to solve problems. Meanwhile, creativity is especially valued when envisioning the future. And this is a territory where robots do not tread. Yes, they are infallible, but that is exactly what hinders creative thinking.  

You can learn more about how to develop this skill in LinkedIn courses Business Innovation Foundations, Building Creative Organizations, Leading with Innovation, Unlock Your Team's Creativity or books Thinking in New Boxes by Luc De Brabandere, The Joy in Business by Joy Baldridge, Creative Strategy by Chris Bilton, Building Your Business the Right-Brain Way by Jennifer Lee. 

How to stay motivated?  

Those skills of the future might be important, but they are not built in a person. Fortunately, they can be mastered if you know a few rules: 

1. Remember what your goal is. According to statistics, only 3% of users finish training at Coursera. At the first glance, this figure does not strike as very high. However, in estimating it, we are guided by old standards of completeness. That is, if a person passed all the modules, checked all the boxes, marked the course as completed, then it will be considered a good result. But why do we think 3% is bad? Did they all really study or just ticked the boxes? And if among those who did not get into 3%, are people who found answers to their questions, is it a good statistic or not? Therefore, do not study for appearance’s sake and remember your specific purpose. After all, even the goal “to learn English” can be different, depending on whether we want to become a speaker at an English-language conference or move to London. 

2. Take a sportsman’s approach. Act like professional athletes. Rely on discipline, be consistent in learning, practice your rituals, rewards. It might also help if you have a circle of people who support and encourage you towards your goal. The technique of small steps might be useful as well. 

3. Practice concentration. Fast flickering pictures, constant multitasking make it difficult to focus. For that reason, training programs are offering us more and more of the “quick” knowledge — only the essence and that, what might draw attention and interest. Nevertheless, you can still train concentration and attention through Mindfulness techniques. 

4. Facilitation instead of directives. In the past two years, EPAM training has progressively shifted into the mode where part of the content is provided by the study group itself. It improves interaction and involvement in learning. By the way, sanguine and choleric people absolutely embrace facilitation. People with melancholic or phlegmatic temperaments mainly focus on practicality, key points and the best cases. Then again, the truth is somewhere in the middle and the use of both approaches increases the effectiveness of learning. 

5. Acknowledge the infinity of learning. There is a cognitive bias called the Dunning-Kruger effect. Essentially it means that a less competent person is convinced that they know everything but the low level of their competence does not allow them to realize their mistake. Some people believe that they know everything, and they come to study to assure themselves of it. That is why the task of training centers and centers of expertise is not only to set the pace, style, level of learning but also to show that there are room and opportunities for gaining new knowledge. 

In addition to the books mentioned above, we recommend reading: 

• Atomic Habits by James Clear 
• Mindset by Carol Dweck 
• The Willpower Instinct by Kelly McGonigal  
• Ultralearning by Scott Young.