Debunking the Proposed Half-Life of a Skill: Guild Education’s Matthew Daniel

Matthew Daniel—the Senior Principal for Talent Strategy and Mobility at Guild Education—believes that, in a workplace context, skills are the things we know, can do, and the ways of thinking that help us deliver on business strategy. They are rich, deep, complex, and meaningful.Matthew believes that the “Half-life” statistic that’s been perpetuated about workplace skills is garbage. In this conversation, he details exactly why the half-life of a skill being 2 ½ to 5 years is faulty logic and how we should view skills differently. You will want to hear this episode if you are interested in...

• How to join the RedThread Research community [3:16]
• Learn more about Matthew Daniel [3:52] 
• The half-life of a workplace skill [6:57] 
• The history of the false statistic [13:20] 
• How this statistic has influenced decisions [20:29] 
• The importance of critical thinking [24:18] 
• The lightning round [31:15] 
• How Matthew talks about skills [34:23] 
• Durable versus perishable skills [38:27]
• Skills as an equalizer in organizations [40:55] 
• The big takeaway from Matthew’s research [43:28] 

Resources & People Mentioned

• Join the RedThread Research community!
• Matthew’s article: Let’s not obsess about disappearing skills; we need to plan for the ones that’ll stay
• On the Obsolescence and Retraining of Engineering Personnel

Connect with Matthew Daniel

• Connect on LinkedIn
• Guild Education

Connect With Red Thread Research

• Website: Red Thread Research
• On LinkedIn
• On Facebook
• On Twitter

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