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An empty seat is less damaging than a poor fit.
7 in 10 Tech Leaders Killed a Project. Here’s What Their Teams Were Missing.
I was at an AI industry event recently listening to a panel of four technology leaders responsible for making technology investments inside their organizations.
Someone asked about what it takes to successfully implement AI.
All four agreed on one thing: for most organizations, having an outside specialist involved is critical.
That caught my attention.
These weren’t consultants, they were the people responsible for spending the money. And they had independently reached the same conclusion: their internal teams couldn’t be expected to have every skill necessary to implement technology that is changing this quickly.
A few days later, I came across a statistic that made their answer even more interesting.
Pluralsight recently surveyed 1,500 technology executives, technologists and learning leaders. Nearly 7 in 10 organizations abandoned a technology project in the last year because they didn’t have the skills to execute it.
Whoa! That amounts to a LOT of waste.
The technology may have worked. The business case may have been solid. The budget may have been approved, but the organization simply couldn’t execute.
We may be diagnosing the wrong problem.
When we discover a skills gap, our natural response is training.
Sometimes that’s exactly the right answer.
But there’s an important difference between knowledge, experience and capacity, and I think we confuse them.
Imagine you’re moving a major workload into Azure. You have a great infrastructure engineer who understands networking, servers and Microsoft technology, but they’ve never led a significant Azure migration.
Sure, they can learn, but I would be asking:
Should this project be where they learn it?
The answer to that question could precisely determine the success or failure of your project.
Knowledge Gap | Someone understands the domain but needs to learn a new technology. Trading can solve that. |
Experience Gap | Someone understands the technology but hasn’t lived through the difficult parts of implementing it. |
Capacity Gap | Your people may know exactly what to do, but they’re already busy on other important tasks. |
Those three problems shouldn’t have the same solution.
In that same Pluralsight study, 77% of tech executives said they’ve seen someone complete training or earn a certification and still be unable to apply that skill on the job.
There’s a big difference between knowing how something works and having been responsible for making it work.
Build, Hire or Borrow
Before your next major technology project, identify the five capabilities that will determine whether it succeeds.
Then ask three questions about each:
Have we actually done this before?
Is this a capability we need permanently?
Do we have the capacity to execute it right now?
Your answers should lead you toward one of three decisions.
Build it | If you already have strong people and this capability will matter long-term, develop them. |
Hire it | If the capability is strategic, permanent and important enough to own internally, bring in someone who’s done it before. |
Borrow it | If the expertise is specialized, temporary or evolving quickly, bring in someone who lives in that problem every day. |
That last category is where I think those four AI panelists were coming from.
AI is moving too quickly for most organizations to build every required capability internally before getting started. The same can be true for cybersecurity, cloud migrations, ERP implementations and other major technology initiatives.
You don’t need every skill on your payroll.
But every critical skill needs to be somewhere in the room.
Try this before approving your next project.
Add one page to your project charter called Execution Readiness.
Create four columns:
Critical Capability | Owner | Done it before? | Build, Hire, or Borrow? |
|---|
Your team is probably smart enough to figure it out, that’s not the problem. A successful project shouldn’t carry the cost and risk of them figuring it out for the first time.
Sometimes the answer will still be yes. Developing people requires giving them opportunities to stretch, but make that decision intentionally.
Because if nearly 70% of organizations are abandoning projects over skills gaps, maybe the lesson isn’t training.
Maybe the project needs better alignment with our teams.
Your technology roadmap and your talent roadmap are part of the same plan.
Until next week,
—Jared
Text Me: 314.806.3912
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