How Angela Finlay Thinks About Skills Over Job Titles

You keep saying you can't find the right people.

What if they already work for you?

Angela Finlay is a fractional and interim CHRO who helps companies rebuild how they hire, promote, and plan. She also wrote a book about it and teaches in Columbia University's M.S. in Human Capital Management program. Her argument is blunt: most companies track people by job title, and a job title is just a snapshot of what someone did before. The thing that actually predicts whether a person can do the work is their skill portfolio — everything they can do, most of which never makes it onto a resume. So leaders end up hiring for a skill that is already sitting ten desks away. Kenny pushes on what that means for how you build an org chart when you don't know what the roles will be in eighteen months.

Chapters

00:00 The Talent Paradox: Short on People, Planning to Cut

06:25 The STACK Model: Five Kinds of Skill Behind a Job

14:30 Start With Outcomes, Not Job Titles

22:09 Reward Managers for Growing Skills, Not Just Numbers

27:53 What Counts as a Skill — and Who Validates It

34:33 Why Small Companies Turn Faster Than Big Ones

38:18 The Skills Leaders Are Actually Short On

43:23 Fifteen Minutes on a Friday: Build Your Inventory

What You'll Learn

• Why "we can't find the right people" and "we're about to cut people" are the same problem, not two

• The STACK model — the five kinds of skill inside any job: supportive, tactical, adaptive, complementary, and knowledge-seeking

• How to build a role backwards from the outcome you need, instead of forwards from a job title

• Why paying managers to grow their team's skills is the change that makes every other change stick

• The AI skill nobody is hiring for: not using it, but knowing what should never be handed to it

• Two first steps that cost nothing — fifteen minutes on a Friday for you, and a look at your last three job postings if you lead people

About Angela Finlay

Angela Finlay is a fractional and interim CHRO, author of Skill Stacking: Taking Ownership of Your Career in Changing Times, and an educator who helps organizations and professionals rethink what it means to build a successful talent organization in today's ever-changing workplace.

Angela Finlay Resources

Website: https://windwardhcm.com/

Resources (book, white paper, contact): https://windwardhcm.com/podcasts/

Book — Skill Stacking: Taking Ownership of Your Career in Changing Times: https://a.co/d/c1OVVx9

White paper — Stacking for Growth – The GROWING Model: https://windwardhcm.com/podcasts/

Skills inventory — the STACK Profiler: https://app.stackingyourcareer.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ablumfinlay

Listen on Other Platforms

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-leaders-think-with-kenny-lange/id1434737807

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2wKtzb6KaF1vNlG9TsZkzh

Amazon Music: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/b13c5d64-50db-4626-9685-c356116ec54b

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@KennyLange/podcasts