This experience report shares how ‘Skill the Gap’, a not-for-profit organization, is building the leaders of tomorrow using Agility and thus making sure the next generation have great places to work.

We are doing this by upskilling ‘first job seekers’ from schools and universities in the core individual, team and leadership skills needed for Agility. This is done globally at scale and at no cost to the participants.

What do these ‘new collar’ workers need in terms of skills that they are not getting today and how do they get them at no additional cost? We help bridge ‘the gap’ between what schools and universities deliver and what businesses need.

57% of worldwide leaders say that it’s the soft skills that are more important than core competencies in this dynamic digital world. So, what are these skills and how do we plan to upskill 1 million first-job-seekers in the first 2 years of operations?

“Team working is an individual skill” and training, coaching and equipping the next generation with these key skills before they enter the work place will enable them to be successful from day one and go on to be great leaders.

We don’t stop there…we also place them at our sponsor organizations, thus giving them the opportunity, they need to shine. The sponsors enable us to give the students these skills at no financial cost.

We will share our initial experiences and feedback, the 4 pillars of our curriculum and the 40 micro modules of magic.

We use ‘training from the back of the room’ techniques, volunteers in 4 continents and a unique curriculum, to embed the learning and couple it with mentoring and coaching to deliver a unique learning experience that is scalable and is being currently rolled out in 6 cities from Miami to Melbourne.

Check out www.skillthegap.org for more details.

Now a days Business Agility is trending more and more, and we hear a lot about it especially in Agile Transformation. Business Agility is a complex topic as it is to apply Agile Values and Principles outside IT.

This session will help in spreading a sense of awareness of increasing collaborative culture while applying Agile Values and Principles and how it is different than the Agile we know.

In the beginning of the session there will be a small exercise to get a sense of applying Agile in a personal life.

The gist of this session is about why and how of Emotional Intelligence (EI) to deal with the Digital Technology context effectively.

Developing Digital solutions with Technologies like AI, ML, DL, IoT, Big Data etc. needs large number of diverse skills and ecosystems collaborating together and handling significant complexities of different disciplines. Tremendous possibilities from these technologies are leading to rapid innovation which make Business Agility essential. Rapid learning curve needed to pick up new fast emerging technologies and their application in diverse areas is making Growth Mindset a survival mantra. All these aspects need higher EI at individual, team and leadership level.

This session covers:

• The challenges of dealing with Digital Technologies
• Need for higher EI in the Digital age
• Practical approaches to enhance EI at individual, team and leadership levels
• Research showing the impact of such practices in enhancing EI
• Some case-studies and data from application of such practices in enterprises