September 14, 2026 • 4 Min Read
For years, when organizations faced a critical talent gap, the response was relatively straightforward: define the role, open a requisition and find someone with the right experience.
That approach is becoming harder to sustain.
The capabilities businesses need are changing faster than traditional jobs and hiring processes can keep up. AI is accelerating that shift, creating demand not only for technical skills, but for people who can rethink processes, govern new technologies, redesign work and lead organizations through continuous change.
The World Economic Forum found that 63% of employers identify skills gaps as the biggest barrier to business transformation, while nearly 40% of the skills required on the job are expected to change by 2030.
The better question, then, is not simply “Where do we need more talent?” but “What must this organization be able to do that it cannot do today?”
That is a capability question.
Start With the Capability, Not the Job
Consider what happens when an organization decides it needs to accelerate its use of AI.
The instinct may be to hire AI specialists. But successful implementation can require data governance, process expertise, risk management, technology architecture, change leadership and deep knowledge of the business. Those capabilities rarely sit neatly inside a single role or function.
The same is true across major transformations. An ERP implementation requires more than technology expertise. A finance transformation requires more than finance knowledge. An operating model redesign requires more than organizational design.
Yet most talent systems are still organized around jobs.
Gartner found that 48% of HR leaders say demand for new skills is evolving faster than their existing talent structures and processes can support. It also found that employees selected for their potential to develop needed skills, rather than complete proficiency from the outset, were 1.9 times more likely to perform effectively.
That suggests organizations may need to spend less time searching for the perfectly matched candidate and more time determining how the required capabilities can best be assembled.
Build, Buy, Borrow — or Automate
Once leaders define the capability the business needs, they can make a more deliberate decision about how to acquire it.
Some capabilities should be built by developing employees, particularly when the expertise will be strategically important over time. Others should be bought through permanent hiring when continuity, ownership or deep institutional knowledge matters. Specialized expertise can be borrowed when the need is immediate, highly specific or tied to a particular transformation. And increasingly, organizations need to determine what can be automated or augmented by AI rather than solved through additional headcount.
This requires a more fluid view of the workforce — one that considers internal employees, external expertise and technology together.
But organizations first need visibility into the capabilities they already have. Mercer reports that 91% of companies believe AI is transforming their workforce, yet only 38% maintain a single enterprise-wide skills library.
Without that visibility, companies may recruit externally for skills they could develop internally, overlook expertise already inside the business or identify important gaps only after a transformation is underway.
Don’t Just Fill the Gap. Close It.
There is an important difference between filling a talent gap and closing a capability gap.
Bringing in an expert can solve an immediate problem. But if the knowledge leaves when that person does, the organization remains dependent on outside expertise.
That makes capability transfer critical.
External talent can do more than provide additional capacity. It can help develop internal teams, establish new ways of working, create governance and transfer knowledge that remains after the immediate work is complete.
The objective shifts from finding someone who can do the work to making the organization better able to do it.
As skills continue to change, companies are unlikely to permanently house every capability they will need. The advantage will belong to organizations that can identify critical gaps early and quickly determine whether to build, buy, borrow or automate the capability required.
The future of talent strategy may be less about having every capability inside the organization and more about knowing how to access and develop the right capabilities when the business needs them.