There is a lot of discussion about the speed at which AI and new technologies are changing how organisations operate. But another question is increasingly coming to the fore in conversations across the CCA network:

Are our people developing as fast as our operating models are changing?

Many organisations are already redesigning how work gets done. AI and automation are taking on activities previously carried out by people. Roles are changing. Customer journeys are changing. Decisions are being made differently.

The technology can be implemented relatively quickly. Building capability is different.


A different kind of skills gap

It would be easy to characterise this as a need to “upskill people in AI”. But that risks missing the bigger change.

As technology takes on more routine and repeatable work, what we need from people is changing too. Judgement, problem solving, communication, critical thinking, adaptability and the ability to work confidently alongside technology all become more important.

For managers and leaders, there is another dimension. They are being asked to lead people through a transition while their own roles are changing at the same time.

So perhaps the skills gap we should be concerned about isn't simply whether people know how to use the latest technology. It's whether organisations know what capabilities their future operating model will require and whether they are developing them quickly enough.


Do we know what good looks like?

This is where the skills conversation starts to become a standards conversation.

If roles are changing, what does good performance look like now? How does leadership need to change? How do learning, coaching and development need to respond? And how do we know whether investment in people is actually creating the capability the organisation needs?

More fundamentally, as operating models change, who is defining the standards for the human capability required to make them work?

There won't be one answer for every organisation. But there is value in establishing a shared understanding of what good looks like – informed by evidence and experience, independently assessed and continually evolving as roles, technology and customer expectations change.

Without that, we risk technology strategy and people strategy moving at very different speeds – investing heavily in AI and automation while continuing to develop people for roles designed around yesterday's operating model.


From training to workforce capability

Perhaps this requires us to think differently about learning and development itself.

Rather than seeing L&D principally as training provision, should we be looking more broadly at workforce excellence – the organisation's ability to understand the capabilities it needs, identify gaps, develop its people and leaders, and continually assess whether that development is translating into better outcomes?

We saw a practical example of this recently through our work with CalMac, following an independent CCA assessment of its learning and development approach.

For Clare Stuart, Learning and Development Lead at CalMac, the value wasn't simply in achieving accreditation:

“Yes, it's great to get the accreditation, but probably more importantly... it's actually helped us identify where we need to do better.” 

​The assessment validated areas of strong practice, but also identified gaps and created a clearer pathway for continuous improvement. Some of those findings are already translating into changes in how CalMac approaches learning and development.

And perhaps that's the bigger point.

Workforce excellence isn't simply about having good training. It's about having the ability to continually understand, develop and adapt the capabilities your organisation needs.

Because there probably isn't a point at which any organisation becomes permanently “future ready”.


Defining what good looks like next

This is becoming an increasingly important area of focus for CCA.

Across our work with organisations, we are seeing different aspects of the same challenge: new technology is changing operating models, operating models are changing roles, and changing roles require different capabilities from people and leaders.

That creates a need not simply for more training, but for a clearer and continually evolving understanding of what workforce excellence looks like.

No single organisation has all the answers. There is an important role for independent standards informed by evidence, experience and the organisations dealing with these changes every day to help establish what good looks like and evolve that definition as the world of work changes.

 

This is where CCA has a distinctive role to play

For more than 25 years, our work has been built around bringing organisations together to understand, define and independently assess what excellence looks like. As operating models evolve, we believe that same approach has an increasingly important role to play in workforce capability.

Our role isn't to prescribe a single operating model or tell organisations which technology to adopt. It is to convene, listen and learn; to turn collective experience into meaningful standards and frameworks; and to provide an independent reference point for organisations as they understand where they are today and where they need to develop next.

At a point when nobody has all the answers, the ability to learn collectively, and translate that learning into an evolving definition of excellence becomes increasingly important.

The organisations that navigate this transition best may not be those that implement new technology fastest.

They may be those that become best at developing their people as the work itself continues to change.

So this week's Friday Question is:

Are our people developing as fast as our operating models are changing?

And perhaps the question behind it is even more important:

Do we know what capabilities our people will need next and what good looks like when they get there?