Work is central for the lives and livelihoods of most individuals and central to finding work is the need to have skills - technical, behavioural and managerial. In an uncertain and unpredictable world of technological obsolescence and rapid change further thrown into turmoil through viral pandemics of unprecedented proportions, the insecurity of work and of deskilling is a reality and the compulsion of upskilling is an imperative for the individual livelihood seeker as well as for organizations seeking survival. While technical skills are important and need to be upgraded continuously as individuals grow in experience and expertise, remaining connected to the world of work requires that individuals also acquire purposeful behavioural and managerial skills. This is mainly because work itself is embedded and expressed in diverse social spaces and settings and structures with their own cultural and power dynamics. Undersanding behaviour and dealing with behavioural expressions and articulations becomes an survival imperative.

Skills depletion impoverishes both individual capability to deliver as well as organizational ability to survive and grow given performance pressures and technological advancements. Upgradation of individual skills and collective commitment to continuous skills upgradation are the two keys to survival.

For the individual this dynamic is expressed in the form of pressure for results through defined roles, responsibilities and reviews. What is needed therefore is a diagnostic of role centric skills and opportunities for the development of clearly defined role centric skills for individuals to manage the interface and interactions in work spaces and social spaces. And in this navigationn challenge, there is one skill which is relatively ore critical – a conclusion drawn from long years of observation and engagement with working with individuals and groups in their struggle for survival in work and social spaces.

The skill which is the key to all other skills is the skill of negotiating – as a way of life, as a way of aproaching relationships and transactions with purpose and perspctive. The negotiating skill-for-a-purpose-with-perspective approach is primarily meant to help individuals become self-confident entrepreneurs of their own skills in order better to survive the vagaries of performance pressures, variable incomes and insecure livelihoods through continuous enhancement of role specific managerial skills. Critical research related to the role of skills in the dialectic between the forces of production and social relations of production will also be carried out by the Academy

It is within this vision of skill centric learning that the South Asian Management Development Academy (SAMDA) has been founded. The negotiations skills development offerings of the Academy will help participants to explore their own orientations, attitudes, values, beliefs and their underlying mindsets within the framework of self-managed deployment of skills.