Adjacent skills. The answer to the skills gap?

With a widening of the skills gap and the on-going talent shortage, organisations are having to adapt their recruitment processes. The days of having people fit into strict job descriptions are long gone, now it’s about finding applicants with adjacent skills or upskilling existing employees who are capable of taking on in-demand roles.

Adjacent skills are skills that are closely related and complement each other through shared similarities. These skills are often used together in various tasks and jobs, and having proficiency in one skill can enhance the development and mastery of another. There are several reasons why an adjacent skills strategy can be effective:

• It can fill a skills gap. By recruiting and developing people with skills just outside what’s required, you can close the gap.

• It’s a cost-effective way to build skills. Training existing employees is generally more affordable than recruiting externally.

• It can help with succession planning. Identifying high-potential employees who can develop the required skills means you can start preparing them for future roles.

There will of course be times when using adjacent skills just won’t work but inflation, the great resignation, quiet quitting and a possible recession means organisations need to stay flexible to ensure that they have access to the necessary talent when its needed. To achieve this, leaders need to connect their people and their adjacent skills with the organisation’s ever-changing needs in a strategic way through well-targeted reskilling and upskilling programmes.

The five rules of failure

Andrew Thorp King is an executive fintech banker, spy novelist, speaker, punk rocker, podcaster, ex-bodybuilder, cigar lover, and serial entrepreneur. He founded two independent record labels, Thorp Records and Sailor’s Grave Records, and has invested in many spaces, including online lending, fitness, lead generation, and independent music.

He is also a serial failure. Many people see failure as a single cataclysmic event but the definition of failure is a lack of success. It doesn't meet you’re finished forever it just means that whatever you've done hasn't been successful. There is a lot of drama about failure but it's really the best chance we have in our lives to learn.

Andrew thinks that failure sucks but that after that it rules. It’s something we want to void but if its unavoidable and part of the parcel of doing something that is difficult you need to predmeditively think about how you handle, leverage and optimise failure when it occurs. In his book Andrew outlines his five failure rules.

1. When failure happens it can purify and in that empty space its burns off something that needed to die, an old way of thinking, being or doing. The phoenix can emerge. Handled correctly you can become an objective observer of the failure and then take the experiences and gain from it – you’re not just resilient but more than resilient.

2. Nothing is safe. The impediment to living a bold courageous life in line with our true calling is clinging to safety. This doesn't mean taking unnecessary risks but placing safety first means it is probably something that will inhibit you from doing what you should be doing.

3. Money is spiritual. Used properly money is a tool. If you avoid greed and envy it can be a measurement of your usefulness in the world and also how you measure your thankfulness to others.

4. Build thing 1 and thing 2 dependency. This is the scaffolding, stable structure or platform that enables you to get where you want to be. You can’t just go head on with your dreams, you need structure to get there.

5. You are not your failure. You need to remove failure from yourself as failure is often something we cannot control.

Failure and success can be defined in many ways. We are all constantly evolving and failure is part of the journey. People often don't even know what success looks like for them because it is different for everyone. There is more than one indicator of success and Andrew defines success as finding a way to join yourself with your calling, by identifying and using your talents to their highest impact not necessarily monetary.

Many people feel a unique calling means you need to be an entrepreneur but that's not necessarily the case. Not everyone is cut out to be an entrepreneur and we need to understand our success to know our limitations. The challenge is the comparative aspect.

You can find out more about Andrew at https://www.andrewthorpking.com/

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