Building skills and capabilities for a changing world

The skills that served charities well in the past are no longer sufficient for the challenges ahead.

In this toolkit we share insights and examples of how organisations have driven impact through transforming their skills and capabilities in different ways. 

As a Change-ready leader, you're navigating transformation in your organisation but may be uncertain about the skills and capabilities needed:

• You recognise the need for new and evolving skills but aren't sure which ones to prioritise

• You want to model the right approaches but may not have direct experience with the new ways of working you want to bring in

• You need to make strategic decisions about building internal capabilities versus accessing them through partners

• You're trying to balance innovation and change while maintaining quality and managing risk

• You feel pressure to be an ‘AI-ready’ organisation but its unclear what this really requires

• For HR or Organisational Development leads you may also be wondering about the L&D programmes you need to help your organisation transform and how to support people in traditional roles transitioning into new ways of working.

Think of the fundraiser who can predict the ROI of a DM campaign but not what a new digital fundraising approach might offer, or the support worker who knows the deep value of the conversation they have with a helpline caller, but feels anxious about the idea of co-creating with that same service user. Or the leader who sees that organisational silos are a problem, but is in their comfort zone managing ‘their team’ of discipline experts.

As a change-ready leader, you recognise the need for transformation yet struggle to shift organisational capabilities to deliver that change. Your own experience of the skills you’re seeking may be limited, having never been explicitly taught them. And you’re operating within a risk-averse governance model where these competencies are also scarce. You may be facing the persistent assumption that approaches effective in a more stable past remain suitable for today's volatile environment. And perhaps underneath is a quiet personal fear about whether you possess sufficient knowledge or confidence to model the changes you wish to see - all while facing the implicit expectation that senior leaders should somehow possess all the answers.

The traditional response to organisational capability development has been to delegate it to HR and L&D teams. This leads too often to a narrow focus on training people in established disciplines, doing traditional ‘management development’, or seeing ‘digital transformation’ skills as being about teaching people to use new tools. Capability development for transformation requires both a different kind of skillset and mindset AND to see those skills modelled by the leaders of the organisation. It cannot be delegated to teams to build from bottom-up, or kept in a separate ‘transformation’ silo.

In the Skills and Capabilities Toolkit, we give you insight, case studies and practical advice about how to get started, measure progress and get results.

This Toolkit is in beta, so after reading, please give us feedback.