AI won’t eliminate work, but it will eliminate work that doesn’t use AI. This statement is often heard in conversations about how AI technology will change jobs. It also raises the question of how to equip employees with the skills to succeed in a world saturated with AI technology. That is the core focus of the book The Skill Code by Dr. Matt Beane. Dr. Beane addresses the topic from the perspective of someone well-versed in applied psychology and workforce management research who studies how robotic technology impacts workforce dynamics. I was interested in reading The Skill Code because I have also written about this topic in my book Talent Tectonics but from the perspective of a psychologist whose career is focused on helping companies use HR technology to create more effective workforces. The following are reflections on The Skill Code, summarizing some of the book’s key points.
How Technology Is Fueling a Skills Crisis
The Skill Code defines a skill as the “ability to get results in a complex world” (p.41). This is a broad definition, and most of the book focuses on a much narrower conceptualization of skills. Addressing issues that impact people’s ability to acquire knowledge and capabilities to succeed in jobs that make extensive use of sophisticated technology. The book draws heavily from Dr. Beane’s experience studying the use of robotic systems in healthcare, manufacturing, software, and financial services industries. It focuses specifically on the divide between “experts” and “novices.” Experts are employees whose jobs require extensive specialized skills to perform complex tasks. Novices are employees in less technically skilled roles that surround or support these jobs. For example, the difference between a surgeon and a medical student assisting in the operating room, or a distribution center supply chain manager and an entry-level line employee working in a warehouse.
The core problem raised in The Skill Code is the growing divide between experts and novices caused by technology. Experts develop specialized skills through on-the-job experience performing complex tasks. As technology becomes more complex, the difference between expert and novice skills increases. Experts not only have to master the use of the technology, but often have to understand how it works, know how to fix it, and be aware of its strengths and limitations in different contexts. The more companies use complex technology, the more effort is needed to convert novices into experts. At the same time, technology often eliminates the need for entry-level roles that historically were used to create experts. Technology also removes the complexity from novice-level work, so employees become “hyper-focused on simpler and simpler tasks [without getting] a sense of the broader work system” (p.105). The ability for novices to learn from experts is also becoming more difficult because companies are “separating novices from experts by inserting technology between them” (p.7). This hinders the ability of novices to develop skills by undermining traditional on-the-job learning methods such as performing tasks under expert guidance.
The book provides many examples showing how technology makes it difficult for novice employees to gain expertise. These include barriers medical students face trying to learn how to operate robotic surgery equipment, challenges distribution workers face trying to understand the robotic supply chain systems they support, and difficulties enterprise software sales associates face building leadership skills when they have limited access to other people within the organization. These examples collectively raise the issue of how companies can develop experts when they either no longer have employee novices or employ novices in a way that prevents them from developing the skills to become experts. Even when novices work alongside experts, they are still not able to learn the skills to become experts themselves. The result is work that can be described as “compliance without understanding” (p.108).
The Problems We Need to Solve
Beane describes skills acquisition as depending on “3 Cs”: challenge, complexity and connection. This framework is similar to one I used in Talent Tectonics, but with 3 Rs instead of Cs: roles, resources, and relationships. Both frameworks reflect the same fundamental psychological principles related to learning. Employees learn when their job roles provide “a healthy challenge. Too much and we burn out. Too little and we stagnate” (p.19). To create the right level of challenge, employees need resources to develop foundational knowledge or they will be “overwhelmed with complexity”. Employees also need development resources such as coaching and time to process new information (what Beane calls “soak time”). Last, for employees to effectively develop complex skills, they need to build relationships that create positive connections with experts. As Beane notes, “It is not just task feedback that motivates us—it’s feedback from experts whom we admire and aspire to become” (p. 67).
Technology can undermine each of these components. Automation eliminates the challenge and the complexity found in novice roles, resulting in jobs that make people less skilled and more specialized in narrow tasks. As Beane memorably put it, “Left in the crevices between automated processes in jobs that have been deskilled to their limits” (p. 106). Technology also automates tasks that experts previously delegated to novices. This results in “making novices optional in experts’ work”, severing connections between the two. These uses of technology increase productivity and reduce labor costs but decrease our ability to create future experts. This will create critical skill shortages when current experts leave the workforce.
How to Solve These Problems
Beane argues that to solve these problems, we need to “shift from the three Cs to the three Ds” (p.141). Discover ways to use technology that ensure novice jobs retain the right level of challenge, complexity and connection. Develop methods that support these techniques. And deploy these methods within organizations. The book provides ideas for doing these things, but notes “there’s probably no answer…that works equally well in all settings” (p.143). Two general principles include redesigning jobs to foster developmental connections between experts and novices, and reworking job performance metrics to encourage learning on the job. Many of these ideas reflect psychologically safe learning environments, such as encouraging people to experiment with new ways of working, giving people job challenges that stretch their ability, and treating mistakes as opportunities for learning. The book notes this won’t be easy, as it requires sacrificing near-term productivity for long-term development.
The book ends with a caution that future advances in technology will make it even harder for novices to acquire expert skills. And that companies will not be able to solve this problem on their own. Government actions have a major impact on the long-term health of the nation’s workforce. As Beane notes, a “key role of government is to [address] when our behavior creates trouble that we don’t have to deal with immediately. The threat in this book is like pollution in that sense. Firms get short-term productivity boosts [from technology] but don’t feel the pain of robbing the next generation of its skill” (p.180).
Thoughts About The Skill Code
My first encounter with the issues addressed in The Skill Code occurred in graduate school when I read a book called Will We Be Smart Enough: A Cognitive Analysis of the Coming Workforce. This book noted that “in a world of rapid technological change, no workforce has all the skills that are going to be needed and every workforce contains a substantial number of people whose skills may not be needed at all.” Since then, the topic of skills has been constantly on my mind in one way or another. The Skill Code does an excellent job explaining how technology widens the divide between expert and novice skills. It reminds us we have a long way to go when it comes to dealing with the skill challenges caused by technology. It provides memorable examples showing how employee development can be derailed by technology and how resourceful individuals can occasionally overcome barriers to skills acquisition.
One thing I found missing from the book is scalable solutions companies can use to address skill development challenges. To be clear, The Skill Code provides a valuable contribution to the skills management literature, and I recommend reading it. However, the book contains relatively little discussion of specific techniques to help employees develop skills in the flow of work. This may be due to the author’s expertise in the area of workforce robotic automation as opposed to workforce development. We write about what we know, and no one can know everything. Particularly in such a fast-changing field as skills management. To illustrate what I mean, Beane comments that “recovering from minor mistakes is a critical part of healthy challenge. How could you measure and reward that?” (p.150). This question has been studied extensively by psychologists, and there are empirically supported methods to address it. I know this because I have written about them extensively in my own books, Talent Tectonics and Commonsense Talent Management.
The Skill Code would benefit from having another chapter discussing how companies are using technology solutions to rethink job design, talent management, and employee development practices to close the novice–expert skills gap. Examples include using assessment solutions to identify candidates who have potential to learn certain kinds of skills, micro-learning solutions to support on-the-job skills acquisition, collaborative learning solutions to build novice–expert connections, virtual reality learning solutions that allow employees to develop high-risk skills in safe environments, self-management technology to provide ongoing coaching, and talent management technology to encourage and reward the creation of psychologically safe work cultures. The book also failed to address the growing issue of reskilling existing employees. What happens when technology makes the skills of experts obsolete to the point that experts become more akin to novices? How can technology be introduced so employees are reskilled through the process in a way that ensures their value and employment security? Ensuring we have the experts we need in the future is not just about developing novices; it is also about protecting the well-being of our current experts.
Conclusion
In conclusion, I want to thank Dr. Beane for this engaging and much-needed discussion of the ongoing skills crisis. The Skill Code provides well-researched and insightful ideas that, if acted upon, can help ensure technology has a positive impact on the future of work and on the future of our society in general. Some politicians wrongly blame labor shortages on declining birth rates. In reality, the world contains more than enough people to do the work that needs to be done. The problem is many of these people do not possess the skills required to do this work. As a result, they are relegated to underemployment in poorly paying, largely unfulfilling jobs. Our ability to solve the skills crisis does not depend on having the right people or the right technology. It depends on whether we have the wisdom and compassion to use technology in the right way to support the people we have.
