MAD SKILLS : These overlooked yet vital business skills

Link toward my article published in Harvard Business Review France

A few years ago, we wouldn't have put much faith in certain skills, but today we're rehabilitating them against all odds. Uncertainty, paradigm shifts, the Covid-19 crisis, overdigitalization… these are all upheavals that call for specific skills, known as mad skills, but long feared precisely for their potential to shake things up.

New times call for new talents

"I used to be able to take the time to readjust my strategy. Now, I feel as if I'm always time-pressured and have to constantly adapt. I'm no longer sure of anything."

These are the words spoken by Mehdi B., CEO of a food processing company, as he reflects on the current period. For a long time, companies controlled their internal borders, reducing their degree of uncertainty when confronted with uncontrollable external events.  The arrival of digital technology has shattered these defensive barriers, leaving companies vulnerable to any uncertain event, wherever it may come from. As the example of a famous French underwear brand illustrates, all it takes is one racially-charged video taken by a staff member in the private sphere for the whole company to be tarnished, resulting in a nasty "bad buzz" with considerable economic consequences.

Today, the word "agility" is to the digital age what the word "flexibility" was to the industrial age: a strict requirement aimed at introducing uncertainty and adaptability into business workflows.

Slower Skills development

At the same time, recruitment habits have not changed much, and hard skills, or technical know-how, continue to play a major role. The latter have always carried a great deal of weight in the selection of candidates, probably because they are reassuring. As the old saying goes: "if he's done it before, he'll be able to do it again". They are easily visible on the CV and are based on facts. This approach enabled the advent of our industrial era but showed its limits when companies began to be structured as human collectives. They then had to rely on other, more subtle and intangible types of "people skills": soft skills or interpersonal know-how. These have emerged in response to the need to establish bonds between all the stakeholders in an organization, since human interaction can be a source of efficiency, but also of value-destroying conflicts.

"When it comes down to it, I prefer to recruit people with soft skills because I can always train an employee in technical expertise for a job that will accommodate it, but it will be very difficult to train them in interpersonal skills", points out Christian C., head of a cosmetics group subsidiary.

Are these the same skills that are needed in today's uncertain environment?

Take the example of face masks during the Covid-19 crisis. In the midst of a shortage in France, a retailer decided to make the sale of masks conditional on having a loyalty account. This decision sparked an outcry and indignation on social networks, forcing the retailer to backpedal and allow everybody to buy the masks. On paper, the choice seemed rational and wise, since the promise of loyalty programs is based on granting privileges to members. But in this case, other skills were needed to adapt the strategy to the unprecedented and highly emotional context of the health crisis. It is precisely these abilities that make up what we call mad skills because they are designed to surprise us and are anything but deterministic. It's difficult to categorize them, but in essence, they are the skills that enable an individual to anticipate and manage change, as well as the unexpected, by rapidly processing a vast and varied amount of information. Creativity, for example, has long been associated with the artistic domain, but it can actually be quite pragmatic and applicable in any professional context. These individuals are talented enough to enable us to adjust the focus of corporate strategies, provide rapid and appropriate solutions to problems, deliver a fresh vision, or manage complex transformations.

How to identify mad skills ?

The difficulty with such skills is that they need to be seen in real-life situations, as they are highly contextual. Talents who possess them can adapt and prove their worth in a new situation or in a crisis. This makes the recruiter's job more difficult because, unlike hard skills visible on a CV, or soft skills identifiable in an interview, mad skills can only be detected through subtle indicators.

One of them is intensity. Perhaps you've already experienced this strange feeling when listening to a person, a colleague who seems over-committed in a certain situation. And perhaps you've asked yourself: why on earth are they so intense? What's driving them? Well, they're doing it in spite of themselves, because certain individuals have a cognitive difference that makes them feel stimuli intensely and it amplifies their intellectual, emotional, creative, sensory, and motor reactions. This intensity endows them with a great reserve of energy, enables them to pick up on subtle signals imperceptible to others, and compels them, almost against their will, to challenge the status quo and initiate change. It is this cognitive difference, underlined by psychiatrist Kazimierz Dabrowski's concept of "overexcitabilities", that drives them to be agents of change. These are individuals commonly referred to as Intellectually, Emotionally, or Creatively Gifted. They are curious, fast learners, always quick to dig deep into issues, and keenly aware of other people's feelings. Their intense way of working enables them to be creative and innovative, and to come up with novel solutions in tune with the context they have thoroughly analyzed beforehand.

Another way of recognizing these mad skills lies in analyzing what is commonly called an "atypical career path", or by looking at the sheer diversity of their interests. Some have changed positions and career paths often, and have trained in subjects not directly related to their activity. They may change jobs frequently, as they quickly become bored if their intensity is not nurtured. Their career paths can inspire a certain amount of concern and be described as "unstable", when in fact it shows they are comfortable with change to the extent that they are not afraid to make a new start in order to acquire fresh skills and experience. They frequently have cross-disciplinary and diverse knowledge that enables them to manage a very broad range of situations.

The mention of so-called "Dys-related" conditions (dyslexia, dyspraxia…) on the CV or during the interview can also be an indicator, as these characteristics are frequently associated with creative and complex thinking.

Thanks to their ability to challenge the status quo and their under-representation in the general population, these intense profiles open up the prospect of taking neurodiversity into account in the workplace. In fact, being in the minority, they have often sought to fit in with the organization's normative expectations and, for some of them, have even suppressed their mad skills when their position didn't allow for their expression.

By openly embracing neurodivergent profiles, we are also addressing all the individual differences of our colleagues, thus adding another dimension to the notion of talent development. Each individual employee has their own way of doing things, and thinking about the inclusion of rarer and more complex neurodivergent profiles, which may require adaptations to the workplace, encourages the whole organization to better consider the invisible and cognitive differences we all possess.

Link towards the article - Harvard Business Review France

https://www.hbrfrance.fr//management/mad-skills-ces-competences-ignorees-et-pourtant-essentielles-en-entreprise-60079