---
id: "action-develop-skill-taxonomy"
type: "action-item"
source_timestamps: ["§ Reskilling Is a Change-Management Initiative"]
tags: ["hr-infrastructure", "workforce-planning"]
related: ["concept-skill-taxonomy", "entity-lightcast"]
action: "Adopt a skill taxonomy to map internal supply against strategic demand."
outcome: "A clear understanding of available internal skills and the gaps that need to be filled to meet strategic objectives."
speakers: ["Jorge Tamayo", "Leila Doumi", "Sagar Goel", "Orsolya Kovács-Ondrejkovic", "Raffaella Sadun"]
sources: ["reskilling"]
sourceVaultSlug: "hbr-seg-reskilling"
originDay: 10
articleStem: "hbr-edu-34-reskilling-in-age-of-ai"
sourceUrl: "https://hbr.org/2023/09/reskilling-in-the-age-of-ai"
sourceTitle: "Reskilling in the Age of AI"
---
# Adopt or build a skill taxonomy

**Action.** Adopt a [[concept-skill-taxonomy|skill taxonomy]] — via external providers like [[entity-lightcast|Lightcast]] or the [[entity-world-economic-forum-d34|World Economic Forum]] — to map internal supply against the strategic demand for future skills, resolving managerial disagreements on skill-to-job mappings early (before reskilling begins).

**Outcome.** A clear understanding of available internal skills and the gaps that must be filled to meet strategic objectives.

This is task one of [[framework-reskilling-change-management]] and depends on the [[prereq-strategic-workforce-planning|strategic workforce-planning]] prerequisite. Modern best practice favors adopting a continually updated external taxonomy over building one from scratch (SAP's 7,000-skill in-house taxonomy → Lightcast).