Written By: Bob Mosher, Founding Partner and Chief Learning Evangelist, APPLY Synergies
The word “skills” has dominated the L&D/HR landscape for a while now, especially in the wake of COVID’s economic impact. As expected, many suppliers in our space have lined up to meet this need with exhaustive “skills libraries” linked to almost every role imaginable. For my longstanding L&D colleagues out there, does this sound familiar to you? Does a challenging, if not futile, journey through competency modeling ring a bell? The hair has been standing up on the back of my neck since I first heard skills mentioned in this context. The latest 2024 trends reports show the topic of skills (reskilling, upskilling, skills-based organizations, etc.) emerging as a major area of focus, further fueled by the excitement around AI. Here are a few statistics:
- 83% of HR leaders say they struggle to find enough talent with needed skills.
- 57% of HR leaders say skills shortages are undermining their ability to sustain corporate performance.
- Source for 1 and 2: Leadership Vision for L&D Leaders in 2024, Gartner 2023
- 82% of global leaders at Microsoft surveyed say their employees will need new skills to be prepared for the growth of generative AI.
- Source: 2024 Global Learning & Skills Trends Report, Udemy Business 2023
In addition, a major pharmaceutical company was quoted as saying, “Yes, we understand our workforce needs to be supported while they are working but we can’t lose sight of their need to be upskilled and future skilled.” This is a sentiment being expressed across so many industries right now. Confusing? You bet! Let’s tame the madness a bit.
In order to take advantage of the lessons learned during the trainwreck of our competency modeling years, we need to take a hard look at today’s realities. The skills train has left the station, and we need to be the conductors—not passengers along for the ride. There’s quicksand everywhere when it comes to wading through the world of skilling, be it upskilling, reskilling, etc. If we aren’t careful, we’ll find ourselves right in the middle of it. Dr. Con Gottfredson always clarifies that you don’t actually drown or even die in quicksand. Instead, you get bogged down in it and become unable to move. It impedes your progress to the point of a complete and ineffective standstill. Here are three recommendations to avoid the skills quicksand all around us:
- Let’s once and for all define what we mean by “skill”. – If you’ve read any of my writings or heard me speak, you know that I’m focused on vocabulary. One of my biggest complaints about L&D over the years is that, as an industry, we’re terrible at agreeing on a unified definition for most any approach, learning technology, or methodology. If you put ten L&D professionals in separate rooms and ask them to define the word skill, the ten different answers might scare you. That’s a problem. Definitions set direction, help host dialogues, and, most importantly, drive specific outcomes. In the case of L&D, definitions affect what we build, how we’re measured, and the impact we have on job performance and the bottom line. To put a stake in the ground, here’s how our team has been defining a skill: “A skill is a learned behavior that results in a performance outcome. A skill is supported by knowledge and mastered through on-the-job experience.” Having gone through training on a skill doesn’t mean you can apply it, and supporting knowledge alone is not a skill. Understanding something doesn’t guarantee a learner’s ability to apply it, and training alone leaves learners unable to apply skills. Knowledge gives context, but learners must also know the steps to perform the skill.
- Stop doing the same thing expecting a different result. – That is, after all, the classic tongue-in-cheek definition of insanity (often incorrectly attributed to Albert Einstein). I’m sure you’ve heard it before, and you’ve probably heard me rant about this over and over. Many of the skills initiatives that have emerged, especially from the vendor community (not saying I blame them or that they were setting out to do anything malicious), are focused almost exclusively on training. If you know the 5 Moments of Need®, training only serves the moments of New and More—NOT the moments of Apply, Change, and Solve. The skills statistics shared earlier in this piece—especially the second one, which I love because of the words “sustain corporate performance”—are best met with a different approach than the training-first mindset and design approach with which L&D has always led.
- Workflow learning or BUST! – It comes down to this, and I know you think I’m biased, but I’m not. This last point is based on 20 years of doing workflow learning and seeing its measurable impact on performance. That’s exactly what’s called for here. If we don’t shift to a performance-first mindset/methodology/technology/deliverable, we will fall short of delivering on the skills requests being made by our organizations. I know that sounds like a doom-and-gloom ultimatum, but it’s a line in the sand that we can and must cross! The exciting part of this final recommendation is that it’s already within our grasp. Many are already doing it. The workflow learning methodology, technology, and impact have been proven and are being accomplished every day by L&D departments across the globe.
These are truly exciting yet challenging times, my friends, but we have a way to meet many of the challenges we face—head on and in a defendable way. That will lead to change. Let’s unite around the workflow learning discipline! Let’s become experts in it and bring along the organizations we support by educating them on its power. Workflow learning will help us become more strategic than ever before, finally breaking the training-only “insanity” cycle!
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