I am a hater

Since my days as a purchasing manager, an inventory planner, and a finance analyst, I have been a hater of the tendency in the corporate world to divide skills into “hard” and “soft.”

Why?

I think this way of seeing the world causes us to leave money on the table and to commodify our businesses and hamper our ability to compete in the open market.

And why are we doing it? It all comes from the way we think of measurement.

Go back and read that first line again. Those are some serious hard skills. This is not some self-serving stance. It’s not some communications trainer telling you communications is the most important skill in the world. When someone so deeply esconced in the world of hard skills tells you the “hard vs soft” debate is BS and wrong, listen up.

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