Talent strategy: From knowledge and skills to ATTITUDES

This week, I found the following paper on my “to-read” list. I hereby recommend it to my network: https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/focus-on-skills-to-grow-your-workforce/.

In short, it makes two main points: (1) focus on skills rather than degrees (i.e., knowledge); and (2) go beyond recruiting to grow your workforce but think also of skills management and skills retention. The main omission from this piece is ATTITUDES.

Attitudes are at the top of the Competency Pyramid.

Few are familiar with the Competency Pyramid. This pyramid organizes three types of competencies. The bottom layer contains knowledge (what you know). The middle layer contains skills (what you are able to do). The top layer contains attitudes (how you are wired). Attitudes are much more fundamental to a human and much harder to train than skills. Skills are more fundamental and harder to train than knowledge.

For instance in design thinking (innovation):

1. You know what a persona is (knowledge).
2. You are able to empathize with a prospective customer (skill).
3. You are entrepreneurial enough to reach out to prospective customers and harvest great insights from spending time with them (attitude). ?

Talent strategy: Knowledge -> Skills -> Attitudes

If companies want to grow their talent, they need to shift their focus from knowledge to skills but especially to attitudes.

Why? Well, attitudes are the hardest to train in a short while. Thus, if people do not have the right attitude there are no quick fixes. Plus, they are more fundamental in their influence. Thus, people with the right attitude will get further than people with the right skill but the wrong attitude.

So what? Put attitudes in everything you do. Define which attitudes you want your people to have depending on their function or role. Do a better job at scanning these attitudes when hiring. In your training and coaching initiatives, put attitudes first. It is very easy to semi-automate training these days for knowledge. Go beyond that and dare to embark on including attitude formation in your training. In your retention and firing, put attitude central. Keep people with a great attitude that screw up in an assignment (“We will invest in you all the way!”). You will find it to pay back x-fold. And if people have the wrong attitude, prepare their exit, even if they have outstanding knowledge and skills. Given the latter, the best exit is to gently guide them to work elsewhere.

IN SUM: when you think today or tomorrow about growing your team. Do not think too easily about recruiting and do not be too frustrated about not finding certain skill profiles. Think more fundamentally. Are you scaling your team on the right fundamental attitudes? Also with that in mind, hold the course when it gets tough. As Margaret Thatcher once proclaimed in the context of the Falklands conflict… “We will stand on principle, or we will not stand at all.”