Engineering Managers Need to Learn Managing Skill Flows and Not Stocks

From Medium:

"For businesses, this means they need to observe and understand where and how fast will evolve the obsolescence of their internal skills that make the core of their “human capital”. They may use provocative efforts with exercises that could be called destroyyourskills.com like, Jack Welch at General Electric in the late 90s, who created a movement, destroyyourbusiness.com, as a means to make everyone understand that the Internet would disrupt business models. Similarly, today we must understand how each skill becomes obsolete or is becoming a commodity, and how fast. Corporations must thoroughly review their modes of learning. They must understand how systems, structures, current cultures actually paralyze rather than encourage the inevitable evolution of skills. This occurs for example when skill definitions are too closely related to job descriptions, or when linking transfers or promotions to the acquisition of specific skills, etc. Corporations must also simultaneously consider the expertise not only of internal employees but also of those contributors, whatever their status, that are external to the company and who possess the skills needed but are not available inside. New external skills often become mission critical. They have to encourage the optimal combination between inside and outside resources in ways far different from the old outsourcing logic. In short, corporations must reinvent their approach to skills based on fast moving flows of skills rather than stocks."