McKinsey recently wrote about a skills-based approach to workforce development. My first reaction was puzzlement – is there another way of doing that? Apparently, there is: base hiring decisions more on qualifications and experience.

Their research suggests that skills-based hiring is ‘five times more predictive of job performance than hiring for education and more than two times more predictive than hiring for work experience’. Not only does it open up a much bigger pool of potential hires, but skills-based hires also stay in jobs longer than ‘qualified’ hires, which is obviously important when it’s so hard to find and keep people.

So why isn’t skills-based hiring more widespread? Like many things, beliefs about qualifications and experience have become assumptions and then they drop into that part of our collective brain that doesn’t do much scrutinising. It just becomes an unquestioned convention. Like getting only one drinks menu per table.  

We’re in the process of raising capital for international growth and we’re trying to explain how we’re different. We explain our learning process and people say, well that makes a lot of sense, but how are you different? I was thinking about that question when I read the McKinsey piece. We take a skills-based approach to management training; here’s the technique, now talk to your manager and your peers about how it applies to your situation, and practice it until you become skilled.

Makes sense, right? The alternative is a knowledge-based approach; get everyone in a room, present content about the technique, and here’s some more content about it and here’s some more detailed content about how it works and how to think about it. Got that? Okay, on to the next technique.

And that’s the dominant mode for management training; workshops led by instructors who will give you everything you could possibly need to know. You’re expected to take that knowledge and apply it back at your workplace.

Except you don’t, because that isn’t how adults learn skills. Sometimes you’ll get an insight that will change how you operate, but it’s pretty hit and miss as to what’s going to land for people. Generally, you’ll forget most of what you heard in a matter of days because there’s no process for practice.

Why does knowledge-based training continue to be the default setting for management training? Same reason you’re waiting to see the drinks menu.