“Upskilling” as a business term was coined in the late 70s. But the pressure to “upskill” has never seemed more acute.
Andrew Geoghegan, CMO of William Grant & Sons, described the challenge of upskilling for marketers a few months ago:
“There used to be significant investment in-house in upskilling teams and building on those core skills and competencies.
“Now, though, teams are being put under pressure to deliver in volatile and uncertain times with no promise of that burden being eased. Even if there is a skills gap it doesn’t change the fact that someone has to do the work.
“Doing ‘more with less’ was normally about marketing investment, but now it’s as much about people resource and doing the same amount of work with fewer people on the team.”
Earlier this year, Marketing Week revealed “data and analytics” to be the biggest skills gap in marketing teams. In a survey of over 3,000 brand-side marketers, 37% pointed at a lack of “data and analytics” skills as the most urgent. But that’s just one skills gap of many.
Mastercard CMO Raja Rajamannar described the current pressure to learn AI:
“I bet for many marketers even one year back, AI was relatively irrelevant, but today if you don’t get up the curve and learn to start deploying AI intelligently, you can become obsolete.”
Raja tries to set an example to his marketing team by personally spending “five to six hours” every weekend on his own upskilling.
Upskilling is easier said than done.
In the same Marketing Week survey, 48% of marketers said they have not been offered upskilling opportunities in the last 12 months.
The Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM) recently reported that 56% of marketers are worried about burnout in their current role.
Here are a few related cartoons I’ve drawn over the years:
