Many of the things that should go without saying really do need to be said in the modern world to counter the hype.
Here are a few things that are worth remembering when it comes to the HR/L&D quest for skills.
1. Skills are an unproven theory
To my knowledge, no one has yet set out to validate the premise that skills
are a relevant predictor of performance (and yes, I have looked for this
extensively). To the contrary, in my own life I’ve successfully delivered some
pretty awesome things that I had zero skills for, at least upfront. It is only
afterwards that I can claim mastery of any relevant skills, making them an
output of success, not an input for it. If you think about it, perhaps you can
come up with some examples in your own life? While we’re at it, can you think
of any times when you had all the right skills and, for whatever reason, the
project didn’t work out very well? Yeah, me too. Pesky factors like
environment/conditions really do matter more.
2. Skills are not things
Tempting as it may be to think of skills as objects like in the physical
world, they are not things at all, they are extremely squishy concepts. To
have a skill in something as straightforward as, say, video production or HTML
means something quite different in 1992 than 2002 than 2012 than 2022. The
definitions of each skill are evolving and impermanent, which leads to the
next point.
3. Skills erode
Even if the definitions of a skill hasn’t changed at all, just because I knew
how to do something before doesn’t mean I have retained the ability to
leverage that skill today. Skills that we do not use will naturally atrophy as
our brains literally prune that unused information away over time. And what of
our bodies? While I once had some amount of athletic skill, I can tell you
that my mid-forties body is no longer capable of delivering what it could
before, even if I do remember how.
4. HR and L &D are ill-equipped to handle skills
There are communities and industries that have tools to create vocabularies
and tools to manage skills. But Human Resources? Or Learning & Development?
Not so much. As fast-learning, resourceful, and generally well-meaning as we
are, we really don’t have the kinds of minds and models it takes to approach
such something so inherently semantic as an ontology. It takes methodic
scientific reasoning and patient intellectual rigor to see this effort through
and get to something useful. We may be able to use the tools we’re given, but
we’re too accomodating in temperment to be ones who built them.
5. Skills aren’t the point
Keep your eyes on the prize, people! At best, skills are a means to an end. In
business, that end is means moving a metric that your organization cares about
and was already measuring before you arrived on the scene. That key target
changes from company to company and from time to time, but if you have to
explain to anyone above you in the org structure why they should care about
your target, then it’s definitely not the target. The strategic leaders
tell us what’s important, not the other way around. Introducing nuance,
refining value, creating consistency, making suggestions, these things we can
do. Skills may help with this…or they may not. The point is delivering value,
if skills help do that, then game on! But if not, then move on, nothing to see
here folks.
The Moral of the Story
I share all this because I hear a lot about skills at L&D and HR events.
People there like to sound informed and important. But, with rare exceptions,
they are neither. People who are well-informed tend to speak with humility.
People who are truly important are focused on doing important work, and that
work speaks for itself.
If you want to tackle skills, get thee to an ontologist, create a data model, build a knowledge graph that your business can use across many applications. That’s what I’m doing at The 3rd Annual Data-Centric Architecture Forum for the next 3 days. Because I practice what I preach to the best of my ability.
To preach — well, at least to advise — just a little more though, if this technical and semantic stuff sounds like magic, then please shut up about skills already and get out of the way while the real magicians get to work. Because chances are they can’t do what you do very well either, and they’ll need your expertise with some kinds of problems.
So go make friends, upskill yourself, and earn the privilege of being part of a conversation that’s actually worth having. You probably do have a ton of valuable information to share! So go to where that is needed, and don’t assume that everyone needs it.