Upgrade Core Skills at Work in 3 Field-Tested Steps

Why Skills Matter: Upgrade Core Skills at Work
For organizations that depend on people to drive success, business outcomes are directly linked to how effectively talent management strategies develop core skills. Upskilling and reskilling employees is a critical lever for both individual and organizational performance. In fact, research on organizational alignment shows that talent accounts for 29% of the gap between high- and low-performing organizations in key metrics such as profitable revenue growth, customer loyalty, leadership effectiveness, and employee engagement.

Organizations that excel in this area ensure they have the right people with the right skills in the right roles at the right time, creating a workforce capable of executing strategy and delivering measurable results.

How to Upgrade Core Skills at Work

Upgrading core skills starts with a straightforward — but crucial — step: assess and prioritize the capabilities your organization needs today and in the future to sustain a competitive edge. The next step — developing those capabilities in a way that drives real on-the-job behavior and performance change — is far more complex, requiring deliberate design and execution.  Once you’ve identified the skills that matter most, we recommend the following approach:

1. Start Small
   Break new skills into discrete, manageable scenarios and tasks that are easier to observe, practice, measure, and track over time. While it may feel counterintuitive to isolate skills that naturally interconnect, learning in smaller, microlearning chunks makes mastery more achievable and sustainable.

   For example, new managers often face similar challenges across organizations at a high level, but what defines a high performing people manager in one company may not translate directly to another. Differences in strategy, culture, and context mean that targeted, contextual practice is far more effective than generic training.

2. Identify the Leverage Points
   Not all skills carry the same impact. From your prioritized list, focus on the two or three capabilities that deliver the greatest value in terms of both short- and long-term success metrics. Employees consistently report that this focused approach resonates with them — it makes learning more relevant, achievable, and directly tied to meaningful performance improvements.
3. Raise the Stakes
   Real on-the-job behavior change requires shared accountability—for the learner, their manager, and the organization. People are far more likely to adopt new ways of working when they are motivated through meaningful rewards and recognition and dissuaded from reverting to old habits through clear, proportionate consequences. Aligning incentives and expectations ensures that new skills are not just learned, but consistently applied on the job.

The Bottom Line
When accelerating learning to upgrade core skills at work, focus relentlessly on what matters most and create the motivation to drive change. In behavior change, less is often more—targeted, meaningful efforts outperform broad, unfocused initiatives. The key question for every organization: do you know which critical skills have the greatest impact on your business success?

To learn more about how to upgrade core skills at work, download The Top 6 Skills for High Performing Leaders

Tristam Brown

Tristam Brown is an executive business consultant and organizational development expert with more than three decades of experience helping organizations accelerate performance, build high-impact teams, and turn strategy into execution. As CEO of LSA Global, he works with leaders to get and stay aligned™ through research-backed strategy, culture, and talent solutions that produce measurable, business-critical results. See full bio.