Building skills and capabilities for a changing world
The heart of the problem in developing new organisational skills and capabilities, is that people default to doing what they already know, especially when what they know has served them well in the past.
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 for iteration, so after reading, please give us feedback.
What contributors said about skills and capabilities
"Fixed ideas about expertise will give way to adaptive capabilities. So-called soft skills will become the new hard skills over time because of the increasing rapidity of change”
— Owen Valentine Pringle, Vice-Chair Elect, Charities Aid Foundation
“Get the right people around you. 2 or 3 really good people who understand it and are resilient… who can stand up and tell the story of what it’ll bring and why it matters.”
— Tracey Pritchard, ED of Engagement and Income Generation
"It's not one person's role to consider technology's impact - it needs to be a cross-cutting mindset. It's not just about bringing in a CTO or CIO; it's about how we all come together to be greater than the sum of our functional parts."
— Lou Lai, Transformation agency director and Blood Cancer UK trustee
TAKE ACTION
If you’re a change ready leader, we’re asking you get involved and help us iterate this Toolkit.
The Toolkit is currently a Google Doc. Click the link, have a read and send us feedback using the feedback survey below. You an also contact us directly.
We want your Toolkit feedback
Throughout this process, we’re asking you to feedback on Toolkits and content.
Please take a few minutes to answer this survey about the Skills and Capabilities Toolkit.
We may reach out to you to follow up, so please leave your contact details if you can.
Collective thoughts
-
To kick off change, upskill your people
Charity Change founder Branislava Milosevic shares her most useful tips and behaviours that pave the way for change in organisation, distilled from interviews with successful change makers