Why Skills Are Overrated

Two Levels of Change

Change is hard. Dealing with change inside of major structural change is harder. The current case in point is the structural changes AI are bringing to business.

While every industry, company, leader, and worker is looking to apply AI tools in one way or another, they are doing that during a time of meta change being caused by AI technologies.

A daily read of the Wall Street Journal is all you need to know. Here are two examples I read this morning.

• Seismic changes to how industries deliver and bill their services (hello consultancies). Article
• Rethinking cost structures for businesses (employee vs token costs) Article

Learning to accept and adopt AI tools themselves represents a significant change. Doing that with foundational parts of the business and expectations of customers changing at the same time is even harder.

But it is harder than that.

Sometimes we can’t even see the meta change as it is happening.

This isn’t like a pandemic where the systemic/meta change was visceral and obvious. The massive changes AI is creating are happening in real time but not in the same way.

As leaders, we must see both levels of change, acknowledge both and importantly, help our team see both too. You won’t have all the answers, but you can’t wait until some mythical future moment when you do have answers before you start talking about these issues with your team.

Your team needs your perspective, and they need to be a part of the conversation, even if clarity doesn’t yet exist.

They need acknowledgement, not answers.
They need a partner and pattern-seer.

Ultimately in times of two-level change, they need a facilitative leader who is looking ahead with them, not for answers but for clues, steppingstones and options.

Why Skills Are Overrated

Overrated is a strong word. But it is one that applies here. And this comes from a guy who has been helping people build skills for over thirty years. The development of our skills and knowledge is a foundational part of growing up. Then we go to work and we move from school to training. Companies look for skills to fill jobs. But with all the focus on skills, we forget something important – that skills aren’t enough.

I’ve written and spoken extensively about a three-part behavior and performance model of mindset/skillset/and habitset (here’s one example). But let me clarify it here in very simple terms.