The Surprise Relationship Between Legacy Competencies and Reskilling

Building the Workforce of the Future

Background

For many employees, there comes a point when your body and brain no longer wish to build new skills. While being indispensable and having a huge IQ may be the holy grail of professional capability for most MBAs, simply showing up to work and doing your job can be genetically hardwired. And this is what makes reskilling so frustrating. It’s important for IT-leaders to be empathetic when considering why their staff may be fighting against them in the battle for change.

Essential Points

1. IT-leaders are hard wired for survival
   For years, IT departments have had limited resources, funding has been difficult to find, and IT-leaders have built mechanisms to store the skills they needed to survive. In modern times, new technologies are abundant (in every app store), insanely easy to find (in every cloud), and services are cheap (as-a-service). However, the old survival mechanisms have never been turned off. Many IT-leaders still think in terms of storing skills for the cold winters ahead. The over-investment in legacy capabilities and storing skills cycle continues until, one day, they find themselves slow, soft, sluggish, bloated, and unhappy. We’ve all looked in that mirror. The magic pill to reverse this backwards thinking is reskilling.
   

2. Psychologically, retraining can be very expensive for staff
   To retrain, it is not enough to learn new things. An environment must be created in which you break down old skills and replace them with new, highly relevant competencies. To change, old behaviours, patterns and habits must be left behind. Any yo-yo dieter will tell you this is the hardest part. At its core, this is why consistent learning and skilling - daily habits - are so important. By creating an environment that breaks down redundant skills and behaviours we are forced to adapt, rebuild, and get stronger. That process of adapting, rebuilding, and getting stronger is like throwing petrol on the competency fire. Old ways need no longer be saved for the future. New skills become the fuel to build new ways.
   

3. Technical retraining is the magic pill
   To stop reinforcing increasingly redundant, legacy skills and replacing them with new, stronger skills is very hard. But soft, slow, and sluggish has no place in an environment where strong, efficient and capable are necessary for competitive or political or personal survival. Successful IT-leaders understand that retraining is the key to optimising the skills base. That retraining is the key to burning technical fat. That retraining is the key to eliminating slow, soft, and sluggish. That retraining is the key to strong, efficient and capable skills. It’s time to make the case.
   

My Take

When it comes to skills shortages, most organisations will be unable to buy in the gap. They will have to reskill and retrain. The first onus therefore is on the IT-leader to work with the organisation to define the business architecture that will take the organisation forward and then identify the workforce of the future and skills framework to support it.