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Four mechanical stations occupy separate compartments around a central module with a blue opening.

The organization can have the right skills and the wrong operating model

An organization can have the right skills and still fail to produce the expected capability. Even when the inventory is accurate, the rules of work may prevent those skills from being used.

PRYSMAP5 min read

Two diagnoses compete when a priority is delayed. The first points to a talent shortage. It seeks additional people, raises expectations, and launches development programs.

The second follows the work: it observes where the work waits, which unit controls assignment, and who can change a decision.

Both diagnoses may uncover real problems. Only the second can reveal that the knowledge was already available.

Having resources and being able to combine them are different capabilities

Teece, Pisano, and Shuen describe dynamic capabilities as the integration, building, and reconfiguration of competencies in response to change. The article does not provide a universal talent design. It does establish a decisive difference between owning resources and being able to reorganize them. Teece, Pisano and Shuen, Dynamic Capabilities and Strategic Management, 1997.

A skill architecture describes expected capabilities and available evidence. The operating model defines how those contributions enter priorities, decisions, and interfaces.

When the two layers are disconnected, the inventory overstates usable capability.

It helps to distinguish nominal availability from operational availability. The former says that someone has a capability. The latter confirms that they can access the information, devote time, participate in the decision, and coordinate with the people who complete the outcome. Only the latter changes the system’s response.

This disconnect often appears after the assessment. Profiles show sufficient coverage, and the discussion shifts to the instrument’s quality. Before changing levels or definitions, determine whether the work had access to the capabilities already recorded.

Four rules can trap potential

The first rule sets priority. A specialist has mastered the required analysis, but her area committed all its capacity six months earlier. The strategic demand enters the planning mechanism too late.

The second allocates authority. A professional identifies a risk and needs four approvals to act. The judgment exists; the decision right remains far from the work.

The third organizes information. Two teams can solve the problem, but they use different definitions and receive data at incompatible times.

The fourth allocates costs. Collaboration helps the whole and harms the local metric. Each unit protects its delivery, leaving the cross-functional priority without effective capability.

The rules also interact. Granting authority without information increases risk. Reserving capacity without a shared way to prioritize creates another queue. The diagnosis must observe the combination that sustains the outcome instead of selecting one variable in isolation.

Two kitchen areas separated by a wall display finished dishes on different work surfaces.

That interaction explains why an isolated improvement can disappoint. Reducing approvals accelerates some cases but leaves the wait untouched if the data arrives late. Creating a cross-functional team adds coordination, but it may add another layer if the same decision rights remain in place.

Training more people can expand the trapped inventory

If the barrier lies in priority or authority, another course increases the number of prepared people without changing their access to the work.

Training retains its value when a gap has been confirmed. It loses precision when used to compensate for a process that does not allow people to apply what they learned.

This distinction extends Developing a skill does not always increase organizational capability. There, the problem was learning transfer. Here, the question is broader: which configuration turns any available contribution into a coordinated response?

Hiring faces the same limit. Bringing in an expert does not fix a sequence in which every decision is escalated or another unit retains access to the data. New talent enters the same configuration that constrained the talent already there.

Following a demand reveals the constraint

Choose a real priority and reconstruct its path. Record when it appears, who can accept it, which information it needs, how long it waits, and which authority resolves an exception.

Include the attempts that never became work. A request that was rejected, postponed, or reformulated to fit the process reveals constraints that completed projects have already learned to avoid.

The analysis may conclude that a skill is missing. It may also reveal insufficient coverage, an incompatible interface, capacity reserved for other goals, or a misplaced decision right.

Not every delay requires a reorganization. Sometimes adjusting a threshold, reserving a fraction of capacity, or clarifying an interface is enough. The intervention should address the constraint without creating a more expensive one.

Then observe whether access time, the number of escalations, and the ability to resolve exceptions changed. These signals do not prove the full strategic value, but they do show whether the modified rule released the contribution that had been trapped.

The catalog represents potential. The operating model determines how much of that potential reaches the work, how quickly, and under whose responsibility. Measuring only one of the two produces an incomplete picture of capability.

To extend this reading, see From a skills gap to a capability gap: individual development is not always what is missing, The org chart is not a map of the work, and Designing the interfaces between teams is also designing capability, which develop complementary dimensions of the problem.

The same constraint can hide a cross-functional contribution: someone influences, integrates, or safeguards a standard but lacks access to the data, forum, or mandate required. Representing that scope prevents assigning an operating-model failure to individual leadership.

  2. Four mechanical modules are aligned; the two central ones are connected by a blue looped circuit.

    When to split, merge, or retire a skill

    Splitting, merging, and retiring a skill correct different failures. Even if the catalog looks tidier after the change, the choice depends on which distinction in the work must be preserved and which decisions will change.