I am increasingly convinced that the most valuable skill in the next decade will not be expertise in a particular technology. It will be the ability to remain useful while everything around you changes. That sounds simple. It may become one of the hardest capabilities to develop. 

The World Economic Forum’s latest analysis places AI, data and technological literacy among the fastest-growing skills. But it also identifies creative thinking, resilience, flexibility, agility, curiosity and lifelong learning as increasingly important. That combination matters. Technical knowledge will be necessary in many roles, but it will rarely be sufficient. (World Economic Forum) 

The problem is that “remaining useful” sounds passive, almost modest. It is neither. It requires us to distinguish between what we know, what we can do and the value we create for other people. 

Technology can change all three. 

Why is this so difficult? 

Most careers are built on accumulation. We acquire qualifications, experience, professional language, relationships and a reputation. Over time, we become faster and more confident because we recognise situations we have seen before. That is what expertise is: not simply knowing more, but being able to interpret events through patterns accumulated over many years. 

The difficulty arises when the patterns change. When an industry, business model or technology changes substantially, experience does not become worthless. But some of its assumptions may expire. The accomplished professional can then face a deeply uncomfortable question: 

"Is my judgement still helping me understand what is happening, or am I using yesterday’s patterns to explain a different world?"

This is not primarily an intellectual problem. It is an emotional and social one. People do not merely possess expertise. They construct identities around it. 

• “I am the person who knows how this works.” 
• “I am the person people come to for the answer.” 
• “I have earned the right to make this decision.” 

When the source of that authority begins to weaken, learning something new is not enough. The individual may also have to accept a temporary loss of status, confidence and certainty. That is why apparently intelligent and successful people sometimes resist change more strongly than those with less experience. They have more invested in the continuity of the existing system. 

Adaptability is not endless flexibility 

Remaining useful does not mean chasing every new technology, accepting every organisational fashion or constantly reinventing yourself. That is not adaptability. It is anxiety. 

Nor does it mean abandoning expertise. Deep knowledge remains enormously valuable. The danger lies in treating a particular method, product or professional model as though it were the expertise itself. 

A lawyer’s enduring value is not the ability to produce documents manually. 

An accountant’s enduring value is not the ability to assemble a spreadsheet. 

A doctor’s enduring value is not the unaided recall of every relevant fact. 

A manager’s enduring value is not the production of reports or the supervision of routine activity. 

The deeper value lies in interpretation, judgement, diagnosis, prioritisation, responsibility and the ability to act in the presence of incomplete information. 

The person who remains useful understands the difference between the enduring purpose of the work and the temporary method by which it is performed. 

The skills required 

Remaining useful depends on a combination of capabilities. None is particularly exotic. The difficulty lies in exercising them together, particularly when change threatens our position. 

1. The ability to learn without returning to school 

Future learning will often be informal, rapid and embedded in work. 

People will need to learn enough about a new technology or business model to use it, question it and understand its consequences. They will not always have the time, inclination or need to become technical specialists. 

This requires a different attitude to learning: shorter cycles, practical experimentation and a willingness to begin before feeling fully prepared. 

OECD research on mid-career and older workers supports practical, modular learning that recognises existing experience rather than forcing people back through abstract, standardised education. (OECD) 

2. The ability to unlearn 

Learning adds something. Unlearning removes an assumption. 

The assumption might be that good work requires a large team, that customers will continue to buy in the same way, that seniority confers superior information, or that a process remains necessary because it once protected the organisation. 

Unlearning is difficult because the old approach may still work reasonably well. The warning signs are rarely dramatic. Performance becomes slightly slower, more expensive or less relevant. By the time failure is obvious, the opportunity to adapt easily may have passed. 

3. The ability to separate identity from role 

A role can disappear without the person becoming irrelevant. 

However, people who define themselves too narrowly by their current title, professional discipline or organisational position may struggle to see where else their capabilities could be valuable. 

The more useful question is not, “What job do I do?” 

It is, “What problems am I particularly good at solving?” 

A finance director may be good at imposing discipline on ambiguity. 

An engineer may be good at understanding complex systems and failure points. 

A salesperson may be good at discovering what people need before they can articulate it. 

A chief executive may be good at integrating conflicting information and creating momentum. 

These capabilities can survive substantial changes in tools and organisational structures. 

4. Judgement 

As routine analysis and content production become cheaper, judgement becomes more important, not less. 

Someone still has to decide what question to ask, which evidence matters, what risks are acceptable and when apparently sensible analysis should not be trusted. 

Judgement is not intuition dressed up as experience. It is the disciplined combination of evidence, context, consequences and responsibility. 

Technology may produce more options. It does not remove the need to choose among them. 

5. The ability to work across boundaries 

People who have only ever worked within one narrow function, sector or type of organisation may find change harder because they possess fewer alternative models. 

Those who have moved between functions, industries, countries, technologies or organisational stages tend to have a broader library of comparisons. They know that the way their current organisation operates is not the only possible way. 

Breadth alone is not enough. A career made up of superficial moves can produce little more than a collection of anecdotes. The strongest combination is usually depth in at least one area, accompanied by sufficient breadth to recognise patterns elsewhere. 

6. Emotional regulation 

Change creates uncertainty, and uncertainty affects behaviour. 

People become defensive. They avoid situations in which they may look inexperienced. They seek evidence that confirms the continuing importance of their existing role. They attack the credibility of those introducing the change. 

Adaptability therefore requires the ability to tolerate temporary incompetence. 

That may be one of the most important and least discussed professional skills of the next decade. 

Research on adaptability emphasises not just cognitive flexibility but emotional flexibility, openness to experience and the ability to remain deliberate under pressure rather than responding reflexively. (McKinsey & Company) 

7. The ability to make yourself useful to others 

Employability is not simply a collection of skills. It is a relationship between what you can contribute and what somebody else needs. 

A person may be highly knowledgeable but unable to translate that knowledge into a useful outcome. Another may understand the technology but fail to understand the organisation, customer or commercial problem. 

Remaining useful requires repeated attention to the outside world: 

What has become more difficult? 

Where is value moving? 

What new risks are emerging? 

What can now be done that was previously impossible? 

Which of my capabilities help solve those problems? 

This is more demanding than updating a CV. It requires an active theory of where one’s value comes from. 

Who is best suited to it? 

The people best equipped for this future will not necessarily be the youngest, the most technically accomplished or the most highly qualified. 

They are likely to share several characteristics. 

They have experienced more than one operating environment. They may have changed sector, function or geography, joined organisations at different stages of maturity, or worked through both success and failure. 

They have acquired genuine expertise but have not become imprisoned by it. 

They are curious without being credulous. They are prepared to explore a new idea but do not assume that novelty is synonymous with progress. 

They can operate without complete instructions. 

They are willing to ask elementary questions. 

They can collaborate with people whose expertise they do not share. 

They have enough confidence to admit what they do not know, but enough judgement not to defer automatically to whoever appears most technically fluent. 

Some of the most adaptable people will have apparently untidy careers. They may have made lateral moves, taken on difficult assignments, crossed professional boundaries or accepted roles for the learning rather than the title. 

In a stable world, this can look like a lack of focus. In a changing world, it can provide a formidable range of reference points. 

Is there an ideal age? 

There is no simple age range in which adaptability belongs. 

Younger people may have advantages. They are less invested in old systems, may find new technologies more intuitive and often have fewer status assumptions to defend. 

But they also have disadvantages. They may lack the experience required to distinguish a fundamental change from a temporary enthusiasm. They may be technologically fluent without understanding organisations, incentives, power or unintended consequences. 

Mid-career people may have the strongest theoretical combination: sufficient experience to exercise judgement, sufficient time to build new expertise and enough organisational credibility to influence what happens. 

They may also have the greatest practical constraints. Financial commitments, family responsibilities and a hard-won professional position can make experimentation feel dangerous. 

Older workers may face prejudice, reduced access to training and the temptation to rely too heavily on accumulated experience. Yet they may also possess the pattern recognition, networks, resilience and perspective needed to navigate uncertainty. 

Age is therefore less decisive than the relationship a person has with age. 

A 30-year-old who believes they have mastered their field may be far less adaptable than a 65-year-old who continues to learn, experiment and expose their thinking to challenge. 

Evidence also challenges the assumption that meaningful learning is confined to the young. Learning new and demanding skills remains possible in later life, while well-designed training can help experienced workers translate existing knowledge into new contexts. (APA) 

The more important divide may be between people who see experience as a platform and those who see it as an entitlement. 

How do you prepare? 

Preparation begins by changing the unit of analysis. 

Do not start with your job title. Start with the value you create. 

Write down the problems you solve, the decisions you improve, the risks you reduce and the outcomes you make possible. 

Then separate your enduring capabilities from the tools and processes through which you currently exercise them. 

Deliberately become a beginner at something. Not because every new skill will be commercially important, but because being a beginner reveals how well you cope with confusion, dependence and visible imperfection. 

Build technological literacy rather than chasing technical mastery. You need to understand what a technology can do, where it fails, how it changes economics and behaviour, and what questions must be asked before relying on it. 

Move towards difficult problems. Routine work is most vulnerable to standardisation and automation. Work involving ambiguity, competing interests, trust, judgement and accountability is harder to codify. 

Maintain relationships beyond your immediate profession and industry. Most people discover change too late because everyone around them shares the same assumptions. 

Periodically ask what would happen if 30 per cent of your current role disappeared. Which parts would remain valuable? Which new responsibilities might emerge? What would you need to learn? 

Above all, do not confuse being experienced with being finished. 

A different definition of security 

For much of the twentieth century, professional security came from occupying a recognised role within a relatively stable institution. 

The organisation provided the structure. The profession provided the identity. Experience increased a person’s value because tomorrow was expected to resemble yesterday. 

That bargain is weakening. 

Security will increasingly come not from protecting a particular role but from possessing capabilities that can be recombined as circumstances change. 

This does not make expertise unimportant. It changes what expertise must become. 

The most valuable people will still know things deeply. But they will also know which parts of their knowledge are durable, which are becoming obsolete and how to translate their experience into new forms of value. 

Remaining useful is not about running faster after every new development. 

It is about seeing clearly enough to know what must change, being secure enough to release what no longer works and retaining the judgement to protect what still matters. 

That sounds simple. 

It may be the work of a lifetime.