Skill Drift and Tomorrow’s Problems
A couple of months ago, my seventeen-year-old told me the low tire pressure light was on in the car she shares with her twenty-year-old sister. She wasn’t too concerned—her sister had told her the light stays on even after filling the tires, so she just ignores it.
Naturally, I was overflowing with pride in the accountability and initiative of our household’s teen drivers.
But in that moment, I realized something familiar:
Resetting the tire pressure indicator isn’t intuitive—but it’s not hard. It just requires someone to stop ignoring it and seek the solution using this novel technology known as Google.
Slightly low tire pressure doesn’t ruin your day—until it does. The warning light often doesn’t seem urgent. But it inevitably lights up at the worst possible moment: the coldest morning of the year, when someone’s running late, or right before a long road trip. And suddenly, something easy to fix becomes a much bigger problem.
Not that I speak from experience.
I bring this up not just for a moment of solidarity with fellow exasperated parents of teenagers (although I see you), but because this experience made me think about how often we do the same thing when it comes to skills gaps in the workplace.
Most leaders can see the indicator light blinking: employees who are capable but stretched, outdated tools or processes, new technologies our teams aren’t fully prepared for. But the immediate pressures of the day—the revenue targets, the hiring fires, the strategic priorities—feel more tangible. And so, the skills conversation gets deferred. Again.
Until it can’t be.
Here’s the truth:
A slow skills leak drags on productivity and innovation in ways we don’t always quantify.
It limits agility. It introduces risk.
And it becomes most painful at the worst time—when the market shifts, a key employee leaves, or a critical initiative stalls because the talent isn’t ready.
When that happens, scrambling to solve for drift is far more costly—financially and operationally—than if we’d addressed the issue when the first warning light appeared.
The good news? Like resetting that dashboard indicator, addressing skills needs doesn’t have to be complex or overwhelming. But it does require attention, intention, and a willingness to prioritize the long-term over the urgent.
So the question becomes: why do we ignore the indicators?
Here are a few themes I’ll be exploring in coming posts:
Inertia
Gridlock
Organizational Rip Currents
Destination Unknown
Building the Bridge to Nowhere
The Insurmountable Laundry Pile
