The Skills-Powered Organisation 

Tanuj, it's lovely to be here with you. And so excited to have the book get published and to talk about some of the things that we've written about. And it's, again, really exciting to be at this moment after all of the work that we've done the last couple of years. The Skills-Powered Organization: The Journey to the Next-Generation Enterprise showcases the ideas we've written about. And it showcases the journey that you guys have been on at Standard Chartered Bank.

Fantastic. Absolutely delighted to do this with you, Ravin. I'm really excited about the book now. It does feel very real. I'm going to start off by asking you a couple of questions, which are top of mind. I mean, what are the top three benefits -- we've written about it in the book quite a bit -- but what are the top three benefits that organizations can expect to gain by shifting their focus from jobs to skills?

Yeah. And Tanuj, as we wrote about in the book, the real benefit here are the opportunity to bend the demand curve of work in a fundamentally different way, delivering productivity, efficiency, and agility at unprecedented levels and scale. But equally bending the supply curve of work to make work so much more accessible to more people.

From your research and experience, Ravin, what is the most important factor that contributes to the successful implementation of becoming a skills-powered organization?

I think it's the three things we defined as those core capabilities. The first being what we termed work design; the understanding of the demand signals for work, an understanding of the supply of skills, and the ability to design work to make the most of both talent, as well as AI in the execution of that work. Secondly, making development a true strategic priority like you guys have at Standard Chartered Bank, where it's not just traditional learning and training, but it's development that underpins the strategic plan. And then thirdly, not doing development for the sake of development, but ensuring that those skills that are developed are deployed back to the work at scale and speed.

Oh, I agree with all of that. Can you give me a specific example of AI has helped with this journey? Really, how has it helped us effectively develop and deploy skills at scale?

Yeah, I think AI has been both a driver for the skills-powered organization as well as an enabler. And I think, specifically, it's enabled deployment with the ability to do what we described in the book; help companies move beyond the one-to-one between a person and a position to the many-to-many between skills and work. And specifically in the form of talent marketplaces: the opportunity to match talent from across the enterprise to emerging work based on people's skills and interests. I think AI has really allowed us to deploy talent in a fundamentally different way.

So now, Tanuj, I'd love to talk to you a little bit about some of what you've done at Standard Chartered Bank. So at its core -- the central concept of -- what actually drives Standard Chartered Bank's skills journey? Why skills, I guess?

At its core, it's about three things, really. A clear articulation of the skills that are going to be needed for the future of work, which is both technical and human, and creating an environment where people can be upskilled in those areas of opportunity. The second core concept in the book is deploying, using AI, skills to areas of biggest opportunity, the areas of biggest opportunity, and doing it in a way that the deployment feels seamless. And the third concept, which is at the heart of this agenda, is deconstructing work, and challenging the ecosystem in companies that we can do this reskilling to deployment to the biggest areas of opportunity at speed and at scale. And all of this with the ultimate objective of driving up productivity in the company, creating employability of the workforce, and genuinely delivering the strategy of our bank.

That's really, really compelling. And just the connection between the business and the people agendas, I think. Inherent, what you just described is, how do you ensure that employees have the opportunity to upskill and reskill as they do their work?

I mean, one of the things we talk about quite a bit is building a strong learning habit in the company, a strong learning culture, which is about tone from the top, technology which helps it do it in a way which feels hyper-personalized, relevant, and giving colleagues an opportunity to be able to reskill and upskill in a way that suits them the most. Everyone has a very different preference in the way they learn. And the third thing is balancing skill building with creating real-time work experience, so learning on the job. And that's where, for us, talent marketplace has been incredibly useful.

That's fabulous. So what would be your advice to other business leaders, who are starting on this journey of trying to become skills powered?

I think the first thing I would say is, ground the conversation in the commercial context of the business. For us, the journey started with having a very commercial conversation about build, buy borrow choices and the commercial implications of that for the delivery of our strategy. The second thing for me is going to be experimentation. So when we started doing our reskilling to redeployment, we really started with some proof of concept to say that the reskilling to redeployment really works in the context of our strategy. And the third thing that I think is incredibly important is co-create with colleagues. So we made this part of our leadership conversations in the company and got our leaders very excited about the opportunity of becoming a skills-powered organization.

Yeah, Tanuj, thank you for doing this with me. We are on this road trip. And it's, again, so exciting to be able to share our thoughts and ideas with the world now that the book is out.

Fantastic. Great to do this with you, Ravin.