Your expertise creates potential. Communication determines
how much of that potential becomes real value.
The Problem with the Skills of the Future
The World Economic Forum recently published its Future of Jobs Report 2025, looking at the skills employers believe will matter most by 2030. AI and big data are among the fastest-growing skills, alongside creative thinking, resilience, curiosity, leadership and social influence.
The research comes from more than 1,000 employers, representing over 14 million workers across 55 economies. Employers expect 39% of workers' current skills to change or become outdated by 2030. The report also estimates that 59 out of every 100 workers will need training before the end of the decade.
Source: World Economic Forum, Future of Jobs Report 2025
But when I looked at the chart, something bothered me. Where is communication?
Parts of it are certainly there. Leadership and social influence, empathy and active listening, teaching and mentoring. But communication itself isn't presented as one of the defining core skills.
And that's the problem with the chart. Communication isn't simply another skill that belongs alongside the others. It's the multiplier that determines how much value many of those other skills can create.
Knowing Is Becoming Cheaper
For most of my career, expertise gave people a natural advantage. You knew something somebody else didn't. You had spent 20 years building knowledge, experience, judgement and contacts. Someone younger might eventually catch up, but they had to put in the time.
AI has changed that. Knowledge hasn't become worthless, but getting access to it has become incredibly cheap. Give two executives access to the same AI and both can research a market, analyse documents, explore strategies and generate ideas.
So what separates them? Judgement. Knowing which answer matters, when the machine is wrong and which piece of information could change a decision. It's also about understanding what the data means when dealing with real customers, employees, investors and markets.
The World Economic Forum's research supports this. Analytical thinking remains its number-one core skill, with seven out of ten employers saying it's essential. Creative thinking, resilience, leadership and curiosity are also becoming more important.
But there's a commercial limit to judgement. Your judgement is worth very little to anybody else if you cannot communicate it.
Intelligence Has to Travel
Imagine you invent something extraordinary. It solves a problem affecting millions of people and could create an entirely new market. But when you walk into a meeting, you cannot explain its value.
The investor doesn't understand it. The customer doesn't buy it, and your team doesn't know what to build. The invention hasn't become less brilliant, but its ability to create value has collapsed.
That's why communication becomes more important as AI improves. It's no longer simply about what you know, but whether you can help others understand why it matters. Communication turns expertise into authority, judgement into leadership and innovation into sales.
But something else has changed. Humans are no longer the only audience you need to communicate with. And most people haven't yet realised they're speaking to another one.
