Why Data Skills + AI Matter More Than Ever

Artificial intelligence is not new. What’s different today is the level of access we now have. The path to this moment has been paved by decades of AI research, development, and adoption. And now, we’re watching the transformation unfold in real time.

Here’s the truth: the people who invested in building real data skills — like those organizations who provided my Excel Data Worker courses to their workforce, who then in turn applied the skills in their daily jobs are already well positioned. Those professionals will have the foundation to take advantage of today’s most powerful AI tools, and this is just the beginning.

Once you have more context and direction, learning additional tools like SQL, PowerBI, Python or R doesn’t feel intimidating — it feels like a natural next step.

The shift organizations must understand: It’s no longer enough to have one person who’s “good with spreadsheets.” Your entire organization needs a baseline of data literacy and starting with #Excel — in order to fully leverage #AI. In the case for some people - that dose of data understanding will be all they ever need to get started or will ever need to be more effective.

Your workforce could have already had this unlocked for them years ago. But you may be realizing the organization waited or assumed people either already knew it or they'd learn more over time. That's not how it works.

There are principles and concepts that once unlocked people are just that: unlocked. Anyone can build a dataset and do things. That’s what the tool does for structured data will do for you. But if you don’t know when and why to use it, it’s like standing in front of a toolbox without knowing which tool to pick up.

The real technical skill isn’t just making something happen with a tool. It’s using the right tool to make the right thing happen. That's impossible for people when they are not given opportunities to be exposed to software and technical concepts. How much do you have locked up in your organization that just needs a little unlock to open the floodgates?

The future belongs to organizations where data skills are spread across the whole team not locked inside a single person.

Robin

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