Given the amount of change in business environments in the past few years, there have been several studies about the resultant skill gap in organizations. The challenge for many is identifying what capabilities are needed to drive the business forward in the New Normal. One thing is for sure, companies are starting to realize just how deep Social Media has permeated business practices and now is a good time to capitalize on the emerging skills.

How is your company using Social Media? It may sound like a stupid question but participation is not always in the obvious places and odds are your employees are finding ways to use it effectively and proficiently. Social Media taps into just about every department these days—HR and recruiting, sales, marketing, customer service, training, IT, even legal. And most businesses have a fragmented practice—each department is doing its own thing. 

To optimize the knowledge and skills, survey your company to identify your existing social media practices by department. This will give you a basic understanding of who is doing what, on which sites, what core skills are used, what core skills are needed and the corresponding business goals that activity supports (if any). The next step is to leverage training that develops the critical technical skills and business knowledge. Last but not least, find what works best in your company (beyond formal training) to keep the learning going.

That’s the simple answer to a broad opportunity. Going forward, more companies will view Social Media skills as a job requirement for certain functional roles, and not just the obvious ones. It will help companies keep relevant in the New Normal and more importantly, it will be a contributing skill for improving business performance.

What do you see as the best skills to leverage and where besides Marketing do you use Social Media?

See also Do You Have Cracks In Your (Organizational) Foundation? For more conversation on Skill Gaps

Strategic planning will likely be far more fluid in future years than in the past. This means that strategy, structure and processes may need ongoing and frequent change (throughout the year) to facilitate faster decision making—and execution. We’d all like to think we’re fast thinkers and even faster at implementing until it comes to budget approvals, resource allocation, etc—and try doing any of that after the fiscal year starts and the budgets are set. It’s corporate molasses.

Given that companies are responding to a market that is still changing (along with their strategy and goals), so do the commensurate skills and job requirements. Coupled with job losses and cost controls, it’s hard to address the emerging needs but it’s necessary.  One of the key activities will be mapping the necessary competencies to existing skills and determining where and how you’ll fill in the cracks, gaps, and all-out breaks from reality.

Since I recently spoke with someone who told me they haven’t more than one fully-executed review in ten years, this can make the process daunting. Management will need to be finely tuned to the capabilities of their employees: existing, emerging, declining and potential. They’ll need a high degree of support to do the things that are needed to address the gaps. It sounds simple, but it’s not—without a cohesive plan and organizational commitment you won’t get very far.

As the New Normal finally surfaces, those who are ready for the new frontier will have had a bit of introspection about where they are going, how they will get there, and who can take them there.