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Richard Haass: Skills gap is a “slow motion crisis”

A conversation with Richard Haass, president, Council on Foreign Relations
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Richard Haass, Council on Foreign Relations President (Photo: Council on Foreign Relations)

This week on Work in Progress, I sit down with Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, to discuss the reasons why there are seven million open jobs in this country that employers are having a hard time filling, despite the low unemployment rate.

“A lot of people, I believe, are incorrectly focusing too much on trade as the culprit rather than on technology as the culprit,” says Haass. He believes looking in the wrong place for a reason could create even bigger problems.

“The economic stakes are enormous.”

“This is a class of problems I call ‘slow-motion crises.’ I would describe global climate change that way. The deficit and debt are that way,” he says. “And the problem with slow-motion crises is they rarely generate the urgency that is needed for action before it’s too late. By the time the urgency appears, most of the good options or long since gone.”

So how best do we, as a nation, prepare our workers for the changes in the workplace caused by rapidly-changing technology? Now and in the future?

Find out how Richard Haass answers these questions in this episode of Work in Progress.

You can find all episodes of this podcast wherever you get your podcasts. And please subscribe so you won’t miss any of our upcoming shows.

We hope you enjoy the conversation.

Episode 109: Preparing Workers: The Economic Stakes are Enormous
Host: Ramona Schindelheim, WorkingNation Editor-in-Chief
Producer: Anny Celsi
Executive Producers: Joan Lynch, Melissa Panzer, and Ramona Schindelheim
Music: Composed by Lee Rosevere and licensed under CC by 4.0.

You can check out all the other podcasts at this link: Work in Progress podcasts

Dana Beth Ardi

Executive Committee

Dana Beth Ardi, PhD, Executive Committee, is a thought leader and expert in the fields of executive search, talent management, organizational design, assessment, leadership and coaching. As an innovator in the human capital movement, Ardi creates enhanced value in companies by matching the most sought after talent with the best opportunities. Ardi coaches boards and investors on the art and science of building high caliber management teams. She provides them with the necessary skills to seek out and attract top-level management, to design the ideal organizational architectures and to deploy people against strategy. Ardi unearths the way a business works and the most effective way for people to work in them.

Ardi is an experienced business executive and senior consultant who leverages business organizational transformation through talent strategies. She uses her knowledge and experience to develop talent strategies to enhance revenue and profit contributions. She has a deep expertise in change management and organizational effectiveness and has designed and built high performance cultures. Ardi has significant experience in mergers, acquisitions, divestitures, IPO’s and turnarounds.

Ardi is an expert on the multi-generational workforce. She understands the four intersecting generations of workers coming together in contemporary companies, each with their own mindsets, leadership and communications styles, values and motivations. Ardi is sought after to assist companies manage and thrive by bringing the generations together. Her book, Fall of the Alphas: How Beta Leaders Win Through Connection, Collaboration and Influence, will be published by St. Martin’s Press. The book reflects Ardi’s deep expertise in understanding organizations and our changing society. It focuses on building a winning culture, how companies must grow and evolve, and how talent influences and shapes communities of work. This is what she has coined “Corporate Anthropology.” It is a playbook on how modern companies must meet challenges – culturally, globally, digitally, across genders and generations.

Ardi is currently the Managing Director and Founder of Corporate Anthropology Advisors, LLC, a consulting company that provides human capital advisory and innovative solutions to companies building value through people. Corporate Anthropology works with organizations, their cultures, the way they grow and develop, and the people who are responsible for forming their communities of work.

Prior to her position at Corporate Anthropology Advisors, Ardi served as a Partner/Managing Director at the private equity firms CCMP Capital and JPMorgan Partners. She was a partner at Flatiron Partners, a venture capital firm working with early state companies where she pioneered the human capital role within an investment portfolio.

Ardi holds a BS from the State University of New York at Buffalo as well as a Masters degree and PhD from Boston College. She started her career as professor at the Graduate Center at Fordham University in New York.