Monia Cusini, Head of People and Head of HR Advisory at Sparq, explains why organisations that can recognise how skills are evolving before job titles change are often the ones that anticipate change instead of chasing it.
During the latest edition of Sparking Thoughts, Monia Cusini asked a simple question:
What if we were looking at the future of work from the wrong perspective?
For years, companies and organisations have interpreted the market through roles, job titles and organisational charts. It is a useful approach, but an increasingly limiting one. Change rarely begins with roles. First, the skills required to meet business needs evolve; then professions change; and only later does the market find a new name for them.
The difference may seem subtle, but it completely changes how an organisation can prepare for the future.
The problem with job titles
Job titles are useful. They help organise work, define responsibilities and find people in the market. The risk is treating them as a faithful and stable representation of what actually happens inside organisations.
In reality, every role combines technical, relational, organisational and decision-making skills that evolve continuously. Some become more important, others lose relevance, while still others quietly enter jobs that required very different abilities only a few years ago.
When we continue to look at work only through professional titles, we risk seeing the occupation but not the change taking place within it.
The Data Scientist lesson
To explain this mechanism, Monia Cusini recalls the emergence of one of the most frequently discussed professions of recent years: the Data Scientist.
In 2008, people at LinkedIn and Facebook were already doing a new kind of work. They analysed huge volumes of data, contributed to product development and supported increasingly complex business decisions. What they were doing was clear. What to call it was less clear.
The name came later.
The term “Data Scientist” did not create that work. It simply made something that already existed visible.
This matters because it reveals how many professions that we now consider normal are born. New and existing skills first come together to meet business needs; then an organisational need for clarity and shared understanding emerges; only afterwards does the market find a label that gives the work structure.
The real lesson is therefore not about the Data Scientist itself. It is about the process that generated it.
Where to look to understand what is changing
If new professions emerge from the evolution of skills, then the question we should ask also changes.
Rather than asking which jobs will exist in ten years, we should observe which skills are already changing inside our organisations.
That is where the most interesting signals are hiding.
Companies that can identify an emerging skill before it becomes a codified professional profile gain time: time to train people, develop internal pathways, retain talent and prepare for demand that the market has not yet made explicit.
In a context where change is constantly accelerating, that advantage can make an enormous difference.