Dr. Ghenwa Habbal, founder & CEO of DGHA, a UAE based boutique advisory firm specialized in human-capability readiness for the Quantum Era.
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Organizations may be solving the wrong talent problem.
For years, the response to disruption has been familiar: Attract better talent, identify critical skills, reskill employees, strengthen succession pipelines and invest in learning. All of that still matters.
But an uncomfortable possibility is emerging: An organization can possess highly capable people and still be unable to use their capability effectively. In fact, that distinction may become one of the defining workforce challenges of the AI era.
Skills-first is necessary, but it is not enough.
The shift toward skills-first organizations is well founded. Yet OECD research published in 2026 found a broken link between skills proficiency and skills use at work. In some countries, as many as one in three highly skilled workers rarely use those capabilities in their jobs. Greater skills use was also associated with stronger productivity and other positive outcomes.
So the question changes. It is no longer enough to ask: What skills do our people possess? HR also needs to ask: Can our organization turn those skills into capability that is used where the business needs it?
Scarcity and underutilization can exist simultaneously. The OECD’s October 2026 Skills for Jobs analysis across 38 countries still finds persistent shortages, particularly in high-skilled occupations. One organization may genuinely lack a capability. Another may already employ it but fail to identify, activate or move it.
The next phase of talent management therefore has to look beyond talent inventory toward capability deployment.
AI makes the gap more expensive.
AI intensifies the problem because it changes both the work and the definition of valuable human contribution.
A 2026 IBM global study found that “while 71% of CHROs identify the ability to supervise, validate and override AI outputs as the workforce’s most essential skill, only 29% of employees rank judgment as important.” That is not simply a training gap; it’s a capability-alignment gap.
Organizations can invest heavily in AI while employees continue developing toward yesterday’s definition of value. Even where the right knowledge exists, people still need the work design, authority and trust to use it.
Capability is not a measure of what a person knows but rather what the system enables that person to do.
F.A.S.T. can help HR move from inventory to activation.
In my research on behavior-based leadership under volatile conditions, four capabilities repeatedly emerged: focus, adaptability, strategy and trust—F.A.S.T.
For HR, they offer a practical lens for capability activation rather than another competency catalog.
Focus: Which capabilities are strategically critical, now and next? HR can concentrate workforce planning, succession and development on capabilities tied directly to business priorities.
Adaptability: How quickly can capability move and evolve? Internal mobility, stretch assignments, work-based learning and redeployment should help employees apply strengths in new contexts rather than wait for a new job architecture or training cycle.
Strategy: Thinking strategically, what capability will tomorrow’s strategy require? HR should connect workforce decisions to scenario planning, AI-enabled work redesign and the second-order consequences of automation.
Trust: Does the system allow people to use judgment? Employees need sufficient decision latitude, psychological safety and access to knowledge to question assumptions, challenge AI outputs and contribute expertise across boundaries.
The point is not to turn F.A.S.T. into another four-box HR model but to expose where capability gets stuck.
An organization may know what it needs but be unable to move people fast enough. It may encourage mobility without directing it toward future value. Or leaders may understand the strategy while employees lack the trust and authority to exercise judgment.
For HR, capability becomes real only when these conditions work together.
HR needs different measures.
Course completion is not capability. A skills inventory is not deployment. Potential is not performance. AI adoption is not transformation.
Alongside familiar talent metrics, HR should increasingly examine skills utilization, internal mobility, knowledge flow, decision authority and the speed with which capability can be redirected toward strategic need.
Thus, the next workforce advantage may come from being better at turning human potential into capability when and where that capability matters rather than having the largest collection of talented people.
What is the talent question of the future?
Talent management was built around a useful proposition: Attract, develop, retain and mobilize the people an organization needs. That proposition remains relevant, but the environment around it has changed.
Skills requirements are moving faster. AI is changing tasks inside jobs. Human judgment is becoming more valuable as machine intelligence becomes more available.
Therefore, the strategic workforce question is now evolving to be something like: How quickly can our organization identify, activate, deploy and renew human capability as strategic need changes?
It is profoundly important to re-recognize that talent creates potential, but organizations determine how much of that potential becomes performance.
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