From Jobs to Skills · Step 2 of 8
Chapter 2: Understand how the organization works today
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↓ Leaders & Business Owners↓ HR & L&D↓ Team & Department Leaders↓ Complete EditionWhy this matters
A learning organization cannot be built from an idealized process chart. Map where roles, skills and learning are currently defined: hiring, onboarding, work assignments, supervision, reviews and informal knowledge sharing. People often know much more than records suggest, while managers may assume that training equals proficiency.
How to run it
- Hold short interviews with leaders, two managers and representative workers or volunteers. Ask for concrete recent examples of errors, handoffs and learning moments.
- Audit the smallest existing set of materials: job descriptions, onboarding instructions, certificates, evidence of work, process metrics and learning resources.
- Mark what is known, unverified, contradictory or missing. Avoid assigning a performance label to individuals.
- Identify three recurrent friction points: a bottleneck, a skill bottleneck, and an access problem for learning.
- Choose a baseline that does not require new surveillance or collection of unnecessary personal information.
Workshop prompts
- How do people learn a task for the first time?
- How do we know the task was learned?
- Where is knowledge trapped in someone’s head or in inaccessible files?
Adapt it to your organization
- Small business: use existing job checklists and short conversations.
- Nonprofit: include staff and volunteers with distinct responsibilities.
- Business unit: review dependencies on central IT, HR and operations.
Illustrative example
A nonprofit community service discovers that volunteers are trained informally, but handovers between shifts are inconsistent. It documents two critical service procedures and introduces a short observed handover checklist.
Common failure to avoid: An audit of process maturity is not a justification for collecting every individual’s history or producing a secret “talent ranking”.
What to measure: Onboarding time, repeated errors, documentation availability, employees reporting access to learning and role coverage.
Deliverable and exit test: A current-state map with three constraints, existing resources and two baseline measures.
Worksheet 2.1: Current-state audit
Copy and fill in this template during a working session. Name an owner, use verifiable facts and record the next review date.
| Prompt / field | Your notes / decision |
|---|---|
| How roles are documented | ________________________________ |
| How skills are recognized today | ________________________________ |
| Where evidence is stored | ________________________________ |
| How newcomers learn | ________________________________ |
| How managers give feedback | ________________________________ |
| Where learning opportunities are unequal | ________________________________ |
| Three gaps to investigate | ________________________________ |
| Suggested action | Owner | Review date | Evidence / result |
|---|---|---|---|
| __________________ | ________________ | ________________ | ________________ |
Worksheet 2.2: Workflow friction log
Copy and fill in this template during a working session. Name an owner, use verifiable facts and record the next review date.
| Prompt / field | Your notes / decision |
|---|---|
| Work step or handoff | ________________________________ |
| Observed problem and frequency | ________________________________ |
| Consequence for quality / mission | ________________________________ |
| Capability or process root cause | ________________________________ |
| Existing evidence | ________________________________ |
| Low-cost experiment | ________________________________ |
| Owner and review date | ________________________________ |
| Suggested action | Owner | Review date | Evidence / result |
|---|---|---|---|
| __________________ | ________________ | ________________ | ________________ |