Five Skills for Navigating the Whitewater World of Work in 2026

Jan 2, 2026

In a rapidly changing work landscape, understanding the five key skills of PRISM is crucial for success. Dr. Gabriella Rosen-Kellerman discusses how resilience can transform challenges into growth opportunities. She emphasizes that creativity is innate and vital in today's world. Building rapid rapport fosters effective collaboration in dynamic teams. Mattering ensures shared purpose, which boosts team confidence during transitions. She also explores how coaching and targeted practices can develop resilience, innovation, and prospection.

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INSIGHT

Whitewater Careers Need New Skills

Career paths are now 'whitewater' rather than steady steamships or sailboats, requiring new skills to navigate uncertainty.
Prospection helps you glimpse different future flows so you can take steps today to hedge against what's around the bend.

INSIGHT

Resilience Can Make You Stronger

Resilience isn't just surviving challenges; the most resilient people become stronger through them (anti-fragile).
Seeing rapids as growth opportunities gives a psychological edge and practical advantage.

INSIGHT

Creativity Is Everyone's Superpower

Creativity and innovation are universal human capabilities, not rare talents reserved for a few.
We must reclaim and support creative capacity because modern work constantly requires novel solutions.

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Happy New Year! This is the time of year when people make big changes. So, I'm bringing back my conversation with the co-author of Tomorrowmind. It's a fascinating book and especially relevant at this time of the year.

Dr. Gabriella Rosen Kellerman writes that that career trajectories used to be like steamships (full steam ahead), and then they became more like sailboats (lots of tacking), but now we're swirling in whitewater. So how can we stay afloat? How can we flourish?

“When you're kayaking in the whitewater. It's hard to get a sense of what could be around the bend, but if you know if what's coming up is a sudden cascade or versus another, you know, set of gentle bumps, or maybe it's a calmer space in the river, it can give you a great advantage.”

On this episode of CRAFTED., we focus on PRISM, the five key skill groups that Gabriella says can help you be more successful: Prospection, Resilience, Innovation and creativity, Social support by way of rapid rapport, and Mattering and meaning.

Gabriella was until recently the Chief Product Officer at BetterUp, a platform that helps organizations and people level up through a mixture of human and AI coaching. She originally appeared on the show in a two-part episode. Part one is includes more on the tomorrowmind skills and her career path; in part two, she describes how BetterUp builds products and innovated under her leadership.

And stay tuned as we employ our own tomorrowminds here at CRAFTED... there are some big changes to the show, including a new name, coming this month!

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Featured voices:

Dr. Gabriella Rosen Kellerman, Partner at BCG, former CPO of BetterUp, and co-author, with Martin Seligman, of Tomorrowmind
Me (Dan Blumberg) — I’m the host of CRAFTED. and the founder of Modern Product Minds. HMU if you want to build something great! I love building from zero to one.

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