How Top Business Schools Are Helping Executives Upskill in the Age of AI
Lifelong learning has taken on new significance as executive teams and their workforces grapple with artificial-intelligence technologies. Leading business schools explain how they’re adapting to ensure that organisations are planning effectively to tackle the challenges and make the most of the opportunities.
We’re in the midst of a wave of opportunity – if we’re equipped to ride it. As artificial intelligence (AI) is embedded into increasingly complex processes, both organisations and individuals need to adapt. For companies, essential technology adoption and transformation will play a part in ensuring their growth. For people, it’s making sure they have the skills to transition into new roles. Like a rip, trying to swim against the tide of disruption – driven by technology, particularly from generative AI – will almost certainly pull you under.
The Australian Industry (Ai) Group’s latest skills and workforce survey found that only 35 per cent of businesses said they had the capability to navigate the integration of AI into their operations. “Fundamental to maximising the take-up of AI is lifting the capability of leaders and managers to develop and execute a strategy that ensures Australian businesses are equal to if not exceeding their international peers,” says Innes Willox, chief executive of the Ai Group.
The need for know-how
“The reskilling agenda has become a lot more visible, driven by organisations needing to ensure their people have the right skills in the face of tremendous technology-enabled change, market disruption and the need for transformation,” says Magnus Gittins, chief executive education officer at the University of Melbourne’s Melbourne Business School. “It creates an opportunity for learning, to assist people and organisations to thrive.”
Leadership teams must be across the threats and benefits of technological disruption, as well as shifts in both public and shareholder expectations and governance. “Upskilling isn’t only about the skills themselves, it’s about knowing what’s happening in the industry or sector,” says Associate Professor Nicole Hartley, director of MBA and executive education at the University of Queensland Business School (UQBS). “For our MBA students, there’s generalist content with contemporary themes but also access to our masterclass series and speaker events on topical areas, such as innovation and financing, ESG, energy futures – critically important areas where people want to upskill.”
Professor Alex Christou, director of corporate education and strategic partnerships at Monash Business School in Melbourne, says digital literacy and data competency are vital fields of reskilling. “Let’s call them technological adaptation skills,” says Christou. “The World Economic Forum [WEF] predicts that fields like AI, machine learning and robotics will be in high demand across all industries by 2025.” Yes. Next year. WEF also predicts that 23 per cent of global jobs will change due to technology-driven industry transformation in the coming five years and is working to support organisations to reskill people.
“Leaders need to foster a culture that embraces reskilling and where continuous learning is embedded,” says Christou. “They have to be part of the zeitgeist around what it is their people need in line with industry trends and technological advancements, such as AI. That necessitates targeted educational programs.”
We’re also living and working longer, says Professor Nick Wailes, director of the Australian Graduate School of Management (AGSM) at the University of New South Wales. “Life is not like it used to be, when you had a period of education, a period of work and a period of retirement with neat divisions between the three,” he says. “That’s the real driver of reskilling for both individuals and organisations. We have to continue to learn if we want to stay relevant in our careers so organisations can no longer rely on recruiting people with the skill set they’ll need throughout their time there in order for the organisation to stay ahead and remain competitive.”
Retraining is the most sustainable path to addressing the talent shortage. “Every industry is looking for people with technological skills and there isn’t the supply. That’s why reskilling is becoming so important,” says Wailes. “You take people in your organisation who understand the business and its culture and give them the skills they need to ensure that the business will respond effectively in this rapidly changing environment.”
Evolving education
Executive education has typically been perceived as geared to the C-suite but it’s important that purposeful learning flows much deeper in the org chart. “The best programs start with the executive team and cascade down through the organisation,” says Christou. “At Monash Business School, we now refer to it as corporate education rather than executive education, with a strong bias towards custom programs.”
That’s reflected across Australia’s top business schools. “Leadership training in the past was very focused on the individual and rarely did we see organisations come in to be a learning entity,” says Hartley. “It’s not a person-led endeavour anymore. It’s really about teams and getting the right people to build a culture.”
She says that major companies need to take a cross-organisation approach. “Entrepreneurial mindsets within large corporations are becoming increasingly important. Organisations are coming to us and saying, ‘We see this VUCA [volatility, uncertainty, complexity, ambiguity] environment – how do we tackle it?’ They want to upskill to embrace a fail-fast mentality and they need to create workplace environments where that’s a safe thing to do. We devise bespoke programs around that, as well as bringing it into our MBA and short courses.”
Business schools and their students are focused on identifying skills gaps and the targeted education that’s required to bridge them. Much of that is around AI – but not all.
“Reskilling means different things for individuals with different responsibilities across the organisation,” says Gittins. “But there’s an emerging set of skills that leaders need to have in their toolkit, which is qualitatively different from the past. There’s a re-emphasis on soft skills with the addition of new technical skills. Leaders should be thinking about how to introduce AI safely and securely into their team and how to have conversations with team members about how it might change the way the organisation operates.”
The myriad outcomes of more AI being implemented in a company require leaders to not simply communicate with but also listen to and learn from their workforce. “The importance of this distributed leadership model is no longer ‘nice to have’ – it’s fundamental,” says Gittins.
“How do you manage the adoption of AI technology, what are the workforce implications and how does the organisation remain true to itself? Navigating those changes calls for leaders to become much more comfortable working in informal channels and ecosystems, playing with ambiguity and influencing and motivating people.”
Responsible leadership
Ethical, accountable management of new technologies and the workforce are significant issues for business. Interestingly, it’s executive teams themselves that can be the handbrake on change. “In some of our major institutions there’s a real gap in knowledge about AI at the top, while the middle-manager cohort is pushing the organisation to embrace AI,” says Christou. “We’re seeing senior leaders looking for help to fill that void.”
As executives familiarise themselves with governance involving AI and sustainability, it pays to focus beyond their own boardroom. “They need to look across different organisations to see what they can benchmark themselves against,” says Hartley. “We design programs that help companies advance and be more robust about that.”
There are encouraging case studies emerging from multinationals that are bringing AI in to take over tasks and upskilling their employees at the same time. For example, IKEA moved many of its customer-service tasks to an AI chatbot but retrained 8500 of the call-centre workers to become “virtual interior designers”, which then became a paid-service offering, turning the job transition into a net positive for the company and its staff.
Consumer goods giant Unilever launched its Future of Work program in 2016 to upskill its workforce – more than 100,000 people in 190 countries. The company organised this vast effort around three pillars: changing the way it changes; igniting lifelong learning for its staff; and redefining its system of work. A Unilever executive explains the third pillar in an episode of the Harvard Business Review’s Cold Call podcast, “We felt that if we just keep trying to hold onto all our full-time employees and compete against everyone else… we’re never going to have the people and skills in our organisation that we need to take us forward… we want to redefine models of working so it’s not just that you’re either fixed or a gig worker but how can we find some flexibility in the middle?”
Business schools say companies are searching for custom programs so they can establish cultures that engender that flexibility. Above all, leaders must commit wholeheartedly to their company being a nimble learning organisation now and into the future. “They must continue to invest in new skills and capabilities, which will change over time,” says Wailes. “You have to be flexible and responsive to the changing needs of your business. AI is disrupting a lot of organisations right now and there’s a skill deficit about understanding what AI is. But there are other hot-button issues, including data and sustainability.”
Having the ability to guide companies confidently on the path to meaningful sustainability is a priority. “Environmental responsibilities and the reporting requirements are a mainstream issue and every executive has to be able to think more systematically about sustainability through their organisational structures,” he says. “We’re seeing growing demand for our help on this. We partner with climate scientists and experts within UNSW to help give our students an understanding of the practical solutions and what’s essential to consider for their business.”
No matter the challenge, people are paramount. “Research shows that one of the number-one reasons that staff leave organisations is because they don’t feel there are development opportunities and they’re not learning new things. In a world where you have talent shortages, not only do you have to enhance your existing team’s capabilities, you also need to create learning opportunities to retain good talent.”
The most valuable resource
“Companies are unpacking what was historically a ‘job’ into a series of tasks and activities, which are enabled by specific skills the employees need to have in order to execute those tasks,” says Riges Younan, vice-president of strategic global accounts with employee skills-matching platform Gloat. “To facilitate that, companies need to have visibility of their workforce at that skill level. This is why companies are now transforming to become skills-based organisations, which allows them to rapidly deploy their people to the work that needs to be done, aligned with their evolving business strategy.”
This is particularly important as AI and automation are deployed to take on more and increasingly complex tasks. “Being able to visualise your workforce at a skill level lets you understand which people have transferable skills that can be applied to different positions,” he says.
HSBC, one of Gloat’s banking customers, had growing demand for their wealth-management business in the Asia-Pacific but not enough trained consultants to service those customers. “HSBC established an accelerated program to reskill people who were working in its customer-service department to become wealth managers.” The bank used Gloat’s software to identify thousands of its staff members who had the suitable skills to make the switch into wealth-management roles.
The system’s AI inference models can match employees to a range of skill-development opportunities so they can upskill or reskill. The program allowed HSBC to train its own wealth managers and meet the new demand and also retain people who may otherwise have lost their jobs to AI chatbots.
“Those customer-service agents have tremendous skills in communication in relationship management, which are transferable into different customer-facing roles. It’s a great illustration of how, rather than trying to hire externally, organisations can tap into their internal workforce and align career paths and opportunities to their employees’ aspirations.”
