Hard Skill v/s Soft Skill: a way to Post MBA

Last night, some friends and I we discussing about the meaning of Leadership, executives, and business (the four of us are Commercial Engineers, two of us with MBA, and another with a Masters in Logistics). They told me that managers should be capable to master their subject o fiel of work. For instance, my friend with the Master in Logistics said he wanted to become an "authority" in Logistics, in order to differentiate himselves from his competition, which it is an excellent point of view. But then I asked him: "And, what happens when your logistical expertise only provides technical solutions to a new scenario, which it only helps to resolve the situation in the short term, thus hiding an underlying adaptive challenge which require not only expertise from your logistics, but also changes in habits, values and attitudes of people involved in that new scenario?"
This challenging question generated a brief silence. Then, my friend replied: "I do not know."

That’s the problem we have today: executives and professionals in general don’t know to respond to uncertainty scenarios, where we have to break paradigms and to face adaptive work. We have been taught with a lot of subject and theories, giving us technical or "hard" skills, which only respond to scenarios that have already been tested and known. But we haven`t learned to face problems of uncertainty scenarios where the answers are not known, and thus this leads us to question not only the current way of proceeding in an organization, but also to question our values, attitudes and habits. Basically, we weren’t been taught with "soft" skills like leadership.

Leadership, (as I have always postulated in this blog) is the activity of mobilizing people and oneself, at a stage of uncertainty, where the answers are not known, and where everyone is part of the problem and at the same time responsible for the solution in one way or another. The so-called “hard” skills, which in one hand, they are technical skills, today they are just commodities, generating no greater differentiation, and adding no value. On the other hand, “soft” skills like leadership makes the real difference between one professional and another today, and they are the ones that really add value to an organization.

Accordingly, organizations and universities should begin to bring focus on what Francisco Cerda in his blog called a "Post MBA.
(http://www.franciscocerda.cl/content/view/454424/Post_MBA_II_la_propuesta_de_un_nuevo_ejecutivo_y_un_nuevo_Liderazgo_para_un_mundo_mejor.html).
Francisco suggested that the pillars for this program should be 3:

Leadership, Strategy, and Society, which act together in the sense that:

• Leadership & Society shares the epistemology of being an observer, the role of language and the theory of systems.
• Strategy & Society shares the look of power, social movements, and the new economy.

Universities such as Adolfo Ibáñez and Alberto Hurtado already have realized this need. I’m sure in some years ahead they will develope a curriculum on the nature of a "Post MBA”, preparing better executives for a new society.