Enterprise Skills Unlocked: Craig Friedman on Building a Truly Skills-Based Organization

L&D and HR leaders have long worked towards building “skills-based organizations.” But the gap between ambition and execution has been enormous. Skills taxonomies sat in spreadsheets, career paths were largely theoretical, and most employees had little visibility into opportunities beyond their immediate team.

But according to Craig Friedman—consultant, researcher, and author of Enterprise Skills Unlocked—the moment we’ve been waiting for has finally arrived. New technologies, richer data, and connected talent systems give us the ability to manage skills at a level of precision and scale we’ve simply never had before. 

And with macro forces reshaping industries, Craig believes the shift to skills-based talent is not just possible—it’s now essential.

In a recent episode of the L&D Podcast, Craig and I dug into what it really means to build a skills-based organization, why the timing is right, and how leaders can move from theory to practical, business-driven progress. Craig shares both strategic frameworks and on-the-ground examples of companies using skills data to improve mobility, resource allocation, workforce planning, and revenue capture.

Below are five key takeaways from our conversation.

1. Technology has finally enabled the big skills shift

The renewed momentum behind skills isn’t just an HR trend or passing fad. It's a direct result of new technology that allows organizations to manage skills data at scale. 

Skills were once seen as amorphous and hard to truly quantify. But as Craig explains, “We have access to this new level of skills data that we actually can manage.”

What’s changed is not the desire to understand skills, but the ability to do something meaningful with them. Talent marketplaces, talent intelligence platforms, and scalable taxonomies now link skills directly to:

• Work tasks
• Job architectures
• Learning pathways
• Workforce planning
• Recruiting pipelines

“That skills data is linked to people and the courses they've taken, but it's also linked directly to tasks that people are performing on the job. It's giving us the ability to drive more personalized, more targeted learning solutions, and deliver them to people in real time.”

This transition from people-as-roles to people-as-capabilities is at the heart of the skills-based organization. “It shifts talent from being a headcount management exercise to a capability management exercise.”

2. Skills-based organizations create real career mobility

While career mobility has always been a key focus for companies, most employees had little transparency into what skills they needed to advance or move laterally. Craig describes the experience as “a black box” for most people.

Now, skills-based systems open up those pathways. “Every job in the job architecture is tagged with the appropriate skills. Anybody can look it up, and the system will serve up in real time all the learning options, any gig in the talent marketplace, any expert mentor, any community of practice.”

That level of visibility is transformative. Employees no longer need to rely on chance conversations or guesswork. They can see what skills they have, what skills a role requires, how close they are to a match, and what learning or experience will close the gap.

This clarity builds confidence, both for employees who want to grow, and managers who want to promote and inspire talent.

And as Craig notes, companies are already using this to drive business outcomes. For example, one company reduced turnover in warehouse roles by building deliberate pathways into sales through short-term projects. 

“They supported that not just with learning, but more importantly with an opportunity marketplace. It really explodes the lateral development options both for the benefit of the company, and the benefit of the individual.”

3. Skills-based talent is a business strategy

One of Craig’s strongest messages is that skills initiatives must be tied to real business problems. Otherwise, they become massive, painful taxonomy projects with no clear payoff.

“One of the more difficult challenges is to start with the skills taxonomy without it being tied to a specific business objective.”

Instead, he advises leaders to begin by interviewing business units. “Ask them what are the business challenges that keep them up at night, and find out if any of those are dependent on skills.”

This business-first approach ensures focus, resourcing, adoption, and measurable impact.

Craig shares several examples where skills directly supported commercial outcomes, from increasing billable hours in professional services, to unlocking growth in mining by targeting scarce geotechnical skills globally.

“I’d much rather have the challenge of connecting several business-supported taxonomies than sitting around trying to figure out how many ways I can slice all the skills in the organization.”

Skills must be built where they matter most—not where they’re easiest to document.

4. Your tech stack must be an ecosystem

Today, skills data lives across multiple platforms. “There’s no one system that does it all. This is, and will be for some time, an ecosystem.”

This includes:

• LMS and LXP platforms
• Talent marketplaces
• Performance management
• Recruiting and applicant tracking systems
• Workforce planning tools
• HRIS/HCM platforms

Leaders must plan for redundancy, overlap, integration, and a long-term roadmap. But for Craig, this doesn’t have to be intimidating. It’s simply the next evolution of the same enterprise systems HR has always implemented.

“It’s very similar to when we did SAP or Oracle or Workday. It's no different than any other set of technology we've ever done. And it's incredibly smart technology that not only takes some of the pain away, but can make this faster.”

What matters most is having clarity on which part of the business strategy each piece of technology supports, and ensuring they continue to share information fluidly over time.

5. Start small, stay focused, and measure progress

For leaders feeling overwhelmed, Craig offers simple, grounded advice. “Maintain a business focus. Don’t fall into the shiny object trap. Have a very clear idea of what business objective you’re trying to improve.”

The right place to start is with an existing business KPI that skills can influence. For example:

• Reducing patient backlogs in healthcare
• Increasing revenue capture in consulting
• Closing scarce technical skills gaps
• Improving internal mobility to reduce attrition

The best progress measures are already in the business. “Prove that what you are doing is helping already existing business KPIs.”

That is the difference between a skills project that sticks and one that loses momentum.

Conclusion

Building a skills-based organization isn’t about taxonomy perfection or implementing a shiny platform. For Craig Friedman, it requires aligning talent to business priorities with a level of precision, transparency, and adaptability we’ve never had before. Thanks largely to new technologies, skills can finally be the performance driver we’ve long believed they could be. 

The shift to skills is already happening. And the organizations that start small, stay business-led, and build with purpose will move the fastest and benefit the most. It’s about empowering people with clearer pathways, better development opportunities, and more meaningful mobility.

If you want to understand not just the “why” but the “how” of skills transformation, Craig’s insights in this episode offer an essential roadmap.

About Craig Friedman

Craig Friedman has 30 years of experience as a human capital and talent advisor, executive, and entrepreneur. He specializes in skills-based talent strategies, learning operating models, change management, and performance consulting. A Senior Talent Strategist at St. Charles Consulting Group, Craig partners with CHROs and CLOs to align global talent strategies, supporting Fortune 500 companies and four of the five largest professional services firms. 

Previously, Craig spent 15 years at Deloitte, leading talent development for the U.S. Tax practice and earning several national and international learning awards. He also co-led Deloitte’s clinician change adoption practice and helped establish corporate universities for regional health systems. 

Craig’s background includes launching two eLearning start-ups and earning two U.S. patents for innovations in online education. He holds an M.A. in Learning Sciences from Northwestern University and dual undergraduate degrees from Tufts University in Human Factors Engineering and English.  Craig is the author of the new book Enterprise Skills Unlocked: A Blueprint for Building a Skills-Based Organization, published in June 2025.