no one knows how to use them

In Scott Keller's book Leading Organizations: Ten Timeless Truths, co-written without colleague, Mary Meaney, he recounted a travel experience that is particularly salient on the topic of skill-sets. Scott was fortunate enough to visit East Timor some five years after it had become a fully independent country. He was disheartened to find that the country was riddled with poverty, in part due to its poor infrastructure, especially in light of the significant reconstruction investment that it and many other nations had made on independence. He wondered why things hadn’t changed.

As he was traveling through the country, he came across a field full of bulldozers, compactors, jaws, and all manner of heavy construction equipment ideal for road-making. The field was overgrown, the metal was rusting, and a few local kids were climbing on the equipment as if they were in a giant playground. “What’s all this?,” Scott asked. “Donations from China from when we declared independence,” came the response from his local guide. “What’s wrong with them?,” Scott asked. His guide replied, “Nothing, but no one knows how to use them.”

The aspiration of many countries, including China, to help East Timor develop as a nation was clearly bold and well-intentioned. The desired change, however, fell apart because the skill-set requirements to deliver the aspiration hadn’t been assessed or addressed. This example may seem extreme, but to us it’s emblematic of what we often see in failed change programs. Organizations make East Timor-like big investments in changing structures, systems, or processes without ensuring the skills are built to enable them to work the way they are intended. Our research backs up the premise: organizations that explicitly assess their current skill requirements against those required to fulfill their performance aspirations are 6.6 times more likely to succeed in their change efforts.

Scott Keller and Bill Schaninger

Beyond Performance 2.0: A Proven Approach to Leading Large-Scale Change. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 2019