The Death of Skills

The HR function faces a shift none of its traditional frameworks anticipated. Generative artificial intelligence does not merely automate tasks: it makes visible, for the first time at this scale, the gap between an employee's stated skill and their real ability to transform a work situation.

The Death of Skills offers an unsettling reading: the skills grid that has structured HR thinking for forty years has become insufficient to decide, allocate, and measure. It describes a state of work that AI contradicts daily, executing in seconds what we claimed was reserved for long, stable knowledge.

This book is not a manifesto against skill. It proposes a replacement framework built around potential — six observable layers that qualify an employee beyond their CV — and around five operational frameworks that an executive committee can sign, fund, and implement on a real calendar.

The book is organised in three sections: an unsparing diagnosis of the HR function in the face of AI; a doctrine, that is, a set of principles that precede the tools; and a detailed implementation, supported by an operational guide of ten ready-to-use tools.

It addresses heads of HR who reject both technological fascination and defensive nostalgia, and who seek a shared language with their executive committee for talking about human capital in the age of generative models.