Welcome to the super-VUCA world. It doesn't matter how sophisticated your strategy is, it's already outdated. Instead, British businesses need to recruit the kind of inspiring and creative people who can outfox a reliance on Al and algorithms, argues business thinker Kevin Roberts.

The reality of Brexit is that British business has to become way more entrepreneurial. If the country stays in the European Union then it's a case of more of the same: a bit of work on increasing market share, some trimming of costs, and all's fine. Outside of the EU it'll be very different.

It's like the story of two men living out in a log cabin in the woods in Canada. A bear comes for them in the night. Neither of them need to be able to outrun the bear, one of them just needs to be able to run faster than their friend. In the EU, Britain only had to run faster than France and Germany and Italy, and that wasn't that hard. Now it'll have to learn to run faster than the USA, than China, than Singapore.

That will mean employers' making sure they have the necessary skills to compete; a change in MBAs and other qualifications to meet those needs -what I see as being a new formula (IQ + EQ + TQ + BQ, all powered by CQ). So basic IQ is an essential, alongside Emotional Intelligence (all the things that robots and Al can't do), plus a Technology Quotient (the ability to make sure that you're using the tech, it's not using you). And BQ is doing it Bloody Quick. All of this formula is powered by the most important quality of all, CQ, the Creativity Quotient.

IF YOU LISTEN TO THE WEF, YOU'RE ALREADY BEHIND

The World Economic Forum (WEF) has produced its own list of business skills that will be a priority for thriving in a VUCA world, that term first devised by the US military to describe an environment filled with Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity. But the WEF is mostly a bunch of grey-white men in suits, looking down from above, from their own Mount Olympus, remote from some of the realities of business today, and in particular, from what used to be the ordinary mortals who are now free to change the world with new technologies. Because we've moved on from VUCA, we're now in a super-VUCA situation where the A doesn't so much stand for Ambiguity anymore as for Accelerating.

Why? Because politically we are seeing the end of the American Age and the rise and rise of China, combined with confusion in the Euro bloc, a bolder Russia and continued tensions in the Middle East. Globally there is a rising tide of nationalism, extremism, autocracy and polarisation. Societies are becoming destabilised by the increasing threat from cyber-terrorism and cyber-criminals rule. The ways in which jobs are disappearing because of advanced technologies, and concerns over our relationships with businesses and organisations of all kinds, the stress and issues of privacy caused by those weapons of mass distraction, our personal digital devices, are also destabilising society. Economically we are facing accelerating disruption from FANG (Facebook, Amazon/ Apple, Netflix, Google). vast new venture capital funding with a "winner takes most" world. Technology-wise we are seeing scientific acceleration driving change faster than many individuals and institutions can handle.

In short we're living through a Fourth Industrial Revolution. It's a world where a strong sense of purpose, excellence and execution have replaced strategy as the priority. Businesses will be organised and led differently, focused on continuous customer innovation. They will be agile, flexible and fast.

Profits will be the outcome, not the goal. Purpose, People and Inspirational Leadership will be the differentiators. The most effective businesses will be those best able to make use of all three kinds of change. All businesses have learnt to handle the introduction of incremental change, but now they need to know when and how to bring in disruptive change and operate in periods of constant change. There's always talk of the disruptive change going on, but it's only happening among a few players, the same names - like Google, Facebook, Uber, Air BnB, Amazon - keep being repeated.

Companies, big or small, need to be looking at equipping themselves with skills and competencies that ensure they're match-fit for the challenges coming.

SKILLS COUNTDOWN

In 2015 WEF members came up with the top 10 skills to win in the Fourth Industrial Revolution. This year the list was updated for 2020. I believe this is already outdated (although it's good to see the rise of Creativity from 10 to 3 ), and I've laid out my own priority list.

It's necessary to distinguish between creativity and Innovation. Einstein said creativity is "seeing what everyone is seeing, and thinking what no one else has thought", it's an unleashing of the mind. There's a big difference with innovation, which is about the processes involved in the introduction of change, how it can be made viable. Innovation is what adds the 'er': making things faster, cheaper, smarter. New technology and Al can do all those things, but they can't understand feelings, there's a whole dimension of life left untouched. With the avalanche of new products, new technologies and new ways of working, workers will have to become more creative to survive. The winners in a VUCA world will be true creators, not those relying on algorithms.

Active listening isn't on the WEF list anymore. No one listens anymore, they just talk. No one asks "what do you think?". We don't learn to listen either, so we go on with a situation where whoever's loudest in a room is believed to be the strongest and most worthwhile listening to. Companies focus on building selling skills, presentation skills, negotiation skills; but don't train active listening skills. Tom Peters has always believed that investing in active listening delivers the highest ROI of any training programme.

We need inspirational leadership more than ever. There are lots of models of leadership, but there are fewer and fewer that will work for new generations of talent coming through. They won't cope with command and control, they want to be inspired by a sense of purpose. Leadership and management have to be very different things. Arguably, we're all well ­managed now, we've been 'MBA-ed' and 'TQM-ed' to the limit. Management is about making sure things are done right; Leadership is about making sure you do the right thing.

We're not taught mental toughness anywhere. It'll be critical that more employees have those resources to hand, that more people have that capacity to always find a way to win. As Churchill said, the important thing when you're going through hell is that you keep going. EQ is familiar to everyone now, but its value needs to be reiterated when more employees are living behind their computers when so much business activity is built on big data and designed by algorithms. If you want to learn how a tiger hunts you need to go to the jungle, not visit a zoo. Al can't manage people.

Too many businesses fa ii very slowly. They don't fix things quickly when they see a problem. That's what British businesses need to make sure they're doing now, unlike the main UK political parties, who keep on making the same mistakes, not learning from their Brexit failures and woes. So the transition to super-VUCA will demand that businesses hire the right skills, give people responsibility, learning, recognition and joy, and create a culture where people can fail fast, learn fast, and fix fast. Bloody quick!

Kevin Roberts is an international business leader, founder and educator. His company Red Rose Consulting counsels business leaders and employees on creative thinking, marketing, and leadership. From 1997 to 2014 Kevin was New York-based Chairman and Worldwide CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi, one of the world's leading creative organisations, with responsibility for the effectiveness of several of the world's leading advertising budgets including Toyota and Procter & Gamble.

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