The AI Skills You Should Be Building Now

Most people are dabbling in AI. Fewer are learning to work with it.

In this episode of the HBR IdeaCast, Accenture’s Paul Daugherty and James Wilson break down what they call fusion skills — the practical abilities professionals need to collaborate with generative AI in a way that’s actually useful.

And here’s the good news: you don’t need to be technical.

You just need to change how you show up in the conversation.

There’s a refreshing realism in this conversation. No AI evangelism, no panic either — just a thoughtful look at what it means to work smarter in a fast-moving world.

▶️ Listen & Read the Transcript: The AI Skills You Should Be Building Now | HBR IdeaCast

📍Also available on Spotify.

Three Essential “Fusion” Skills:

🧠 Intelligent Interrogation

Think with AI, not at it.

This means breaking down your thinking into steps and prompting in a way that mirrors how you’d explain something to a smart coworker — not shouting commands into a void.

Try: “Let’s think through this step by step…”

🪞 Reciprocal Apprenticing

As you teach the AI your context, it teaches you how to think more clearly.

It’s a loop: better prompts = better outputs = better thinking = better prompts.

🧭 Judgment Integration

Use your brain. Seriously.

AI can generate content — but knowing when to use it, trust it, or tweak it? That’s still your job. The best users stay in the loop, not on autopilot.

Listen to the podcast to learn more about the fusion skills.