Skills Don’t Fail in L&D. They Fail in the System Around It - Teresa Rose

As organizations pursue skills-based strategies, learning teams are often asked to lead the effort through frameworks, taxonomies, and development programs. Yet many initiatives stall or lose momentum despite strong L&D execution. The problem is not the quality of learning solutions, but the absence of enabling conditions elsewhere in the organization.

In this session, Teresa Rose examines skills through a systemic lens, drawing on work across large, complex organizations where skills efforts intersect with job architecture, governance, operating models, data readiness, and leadership behavior. She explores why skills cannot be sustained when they sit on top of unchanged structures and processes, and how misalignment across HR, business operations, and leadership decision-making quietly undermines progress.

Rather than positioning skills as an L&D transformation, this session reframes them as an organizational one. Attendees will gain clarity on what needs to change beyond learning in order for skills to take hold, and how L&D can more effectively support a skills-based strategy by understanding its place within the wider system.

Key Topics Include:

Why skills initiatives break down outside of learning, not inside it
The organizational conditions required for skills-based strategies to succeed
How job architecture, governance, and operating models shape skills outcomes
The impact of leadership behavior and ways of working on skills adoption
What L&D needs to understand about the system it supports
How learning teams can align their efforts without owning the entire skills agenda