{"id":314146,"date":"2025-12-13T16:21:13","date_gmt":"2025-12-13T16:21:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/314146\/"},"modified":"2025-12-13T16:21:13","modified_gmt":"2025-12-13T16:21:13","slug":"the-ai-skills-gap-is-really-a-critical-thinking-gap-the-fortune-500-fears-it-cant-find-talent-with-enough-sharp-thinking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/314146\/","title":{"rendered":"The AI skills gap is really a \u2018critical thinking\u2019 gap: The Fortune 500 fears it can\u2019t find talent with enough sharp thinking"},"content":{"rendered":"

A new global survey<\/a> encompassing the views of 1,540 board members and C-suite executives reveals that while corporate leaders are embracing artificial intelligence with optimism, a far more profound and existential talent crisis is emerging: the disappearance of the pathways that traditionally developed senior-level strategic expertise. AI is exposing not merely a lack of technical skills, but a critical thinking gap threatening the organizational pipeline needed to oversee and optimize these powerful new systems.<\/p>\n

In a moderated discussion with Joe Kornik<\/a>, senior director of editorial programs at Protiviti<\/a>, a series of experts and top executives from the consulting firm revealed the biggest concerns on executives\u2019 minds heading into 2026, during a lunchtime panel in New York City. The talent issue persists as a major concern, Kornik said, citing the survey, ranking fifth among long-term risk themes and remaining one of the long-standing issues executives expect to navigate through 2035. However, the current era of shortages is unique. Fran Maxwell<\/a>, Protiviti\u2019s global CHRO team and people and change leader, noted this pervasive skills challenge is \u201cmore prevalent now than it has ever been in the past,\u201d impacting \u201calmost every job and every resource\u201d rather than being confined mainly to IT functions, as previous technology shifts were.<\/p>\n

Mark Beasley<\/a>, professor and director at North Carolina State University\u2019s Poole College of Management, who has been affiliated with the Protiviti survey for 14 years, highlighted this profound shift in the required skill set. \u201cI have to say AI is way different in the sense of it is now replacing the job,\u201d he said. \u201cWhereas the others [big technological advances] were not job replacements as much as enhancers.\u201d<\/p>\n

This displacement forces a change in human capability, as the focus is no longer on execution. The required skill set is shifting from whether workers can do certain tasks to thinking more strategically: \u201cKnowledge is sort of now free in some ways. Thinking now has to really kick in.\u201d Beasley added it\u2019s a very different problem for organizations and colleges to solve. \u201cWe need to start thinking strategically. How can we create strategic thinkers, critical thinkers?\u201d<\/p>\n

This realization has led to deep concern among academic and corporate leaders about the intellectual foundations of the future workforce. When asked by Fortune if he was worried about a \u201cthinking gap,\u201d Beasley replied: \u201cYes. As a university professor, yes, I am.\u201d<\/p>\n

The expertise vacuum: AI replaces the path to critical thought<\/p>\n

The trouble has to do with the significant threat AI poses to the foundational mechanism by which corporations cultivate expertise. Traditionally, in professional industries like finance or law, new hires developed deep industry knowledge by performing repetitive, basic tasks\u2014the \u201cgrunt work\u201d\u2014that AI is now automating.<\/p>\n

To combat this structural problem, Maxwell argued organizations will have to\u2014somehow\u2014fundamentally change how they operate and manage human capital. <\/p>\n

The immediate operational challenge, he said, is \u201cHR functions and organizations are going to have to redesign jobs. That\u2019s not necessarily a muscle that most functions have.\u201d This will be crucial for filling the ranks of those new, early-career professionals whose traditional tasks have been impacted the most. Maxwell emphasized the necessity of looking ahead to avoid future stagnation: \u201cWhat\u2019s the impact two, three years down the road if you have no early-career professionals in your organization?\u201d<\/p>\n

The immediate talent priority is upskilling the existing workforce to manage AI and acquire specialized knowledge. He said the current organizational focus is, \u201cHow do we upscale or prepare our workforce to take advantage of this AI initiative?\u201d driven partly by the realization hiring externally for these niche skills can be very expensive. He said HR leaders must get operationally efficient at figuring out what skills you have in your organization, what skills you need, and how to grow the skills you require moving forward. <\/p>\n

The result is a looming void in the management structure. Julia Coronado<\/a>, president and founder of MacroPolicy Perspectives and a director on the board of Robert Half<\/a>, encapsulated the developmental dilemma facing organizations: \u201cIf AI is sort of replacing the entry-level typical positions, and I need people sort of in the middle, how do I prepare the future middle if I don\u2019t give them that ability at the base?\u201d This creates a severe challenge for maintaining quality control and oversight in the future, as expertise is still needed to check outputs and manage and optimize AI tools. <\/p>\n

Beasley summed up the magnitude of this organizational challenge by asking more hypothetical questions: \u201cHow do I get that new middle-level person three years from now? How do you get that graduate to that middle level? That path is far from clear for many industries.\u201d<\/p>\n

Resilience amid interconnected risks<\/p>\n

Despite the complexity of the talent challenge and other headwinds\u2014including cyber (the top global near-term risk) and third-party risks (second)\u2014executives said they were choosing \u201cconfident action\u201d over fear. Sameer Ansari<\/a>, global CISO solutions leader at\u00a0Protiviti, spoke out to say that these risks are intertwined. \u201cWe\u2019re seeing greater operational risks inherent with AI, AI bias, model degradation, security-related topics, [a] lack of resources that actually understand how to take advantage of AI.\u201d In other words, cyber risks are bad enough on their own, but they could be turbocharged by AI tools. To Ansari\u2019s point, OpenAI revealed on Dec. 10<\/a>, almost simultaneously with the Protiviti survey, that the cyber capabilities of its frontier models were accelerating quickly and posed a high risk.<\/p>\n

Coronado said she sees companies exhibiting resilience, realizing economic volatility is no longer a reason \u201cto not take action.\u201d In many ways, things just haven\u2019t been as bad as people feared, she said. Going back to last year, she said, there were \u201cpolicy shocks all over the place. Businesses were just like, \u2018What\u2019s gonna happen next?\u2019 There was just tremendous uncertainty.\u201d<\/p>\n

She added that last December, executives were reflecting on having just come out of yet another tremendously uncertain period in the pandemic. Uncertainty has simply become \u201ca way of life\u201d that businesses must navigate, she said, and \u201cin a lot of ways, this year was not as bad as expected.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although the economy is the fifth-highest-ranked for near-term risk, Beasley said the biggest danger is simply \u201cjust not doing anything.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOrganizations, the biggest risk organizations face is just being stagnant,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

The dominance of cyber and third-party risk underscores the compounding danger of rapid, unchecked AI adoption. Beasley highlighted the exponential nature of this vulnerability when systems are interconnected: \u201cI don\u2019t know how that third party\u2019s using AI. So it sort of quickly becomes exponentially a concern.\u201d<\/p>\n

Looking long-term, competition and customer dynamics are the No. 1 concern, followed by security\/privacy and AI deployment. Noting declining immigration and birth rates, Coronado stressed that globally, growth is now solely reliant on human ingenuity: \u201cAll of growth is going to be driven by competitive advantage, market share, innovation. That\u2019s the only driver of growth now.\u201d This makes the critical thinking gap\u2014the ability to innovate strategically\u2014the most formidable hurdle. But just how capable are people of truly thinking critically, every day on the job?<\/p>\n

The path forward requires deliberate strategy and human-centered design. Coronado advises that amid technological upheaval and uncertainty, leaders must \u201cknow who you are. Know what your values are. Who are you as a company?\u201d Establishing and maintaining this identity and focus on the customer is \u201creally important grounding in this environment.\u201d<\/p>\n

Maxwell was direct in his message to leaders: \u201cYou can\u2019t solve today\u2019s talent problems with yesterday\u2019s talent.\u201d New solutions, like proactive job redesign and sophisticated upskilling programs, are nonnegotiable.<\/p>\n

Kim Bozzella<\/a>, global CIO solutions and technology consulting leader at\u00a0Protiviti, sounded a note of optimism when she said that some organizations are finding surprise results with AI. \u201cThey are finding that the younger generations are probably more nimble with AI.\u201d<\/p>\n

Maxwell agreed, saying that some of the training takes the form of younger generations training and upskilling the older population and creating more cohesion in organizations, not necessarily a generational divide.<\/p>\n

Still, in response to another question from Fortune at the luncheon, Maxwell was forthright about this moment of transition, compared with everything he\u2019s seen during decades in top-level consulting. The skills gap between talent and AI is \u201cmore prevalent now than it has ever been in the past,\u201d he said, noting previous skills shortages didn\u2019t happen \u201cat this macro of a level.\u201d Previous tech revolutions exposed skills gaps, to be sure, but those \u201cdidn\u2019t spill out into the parts of the business, where this is spilling out to every part of the business.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A new global survey encompassing the views of 1,540 board members and C-suite executives reveals that while corporate…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":314147,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[554,733,4308,1338,86,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-314146","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-skills","12":"tag-technology","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom","15":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314146","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=314146"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314146\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/314147"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=314146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=314146"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=314146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}