From Insight to Action: Building the Skills Charities Need Now

Andy Lancaster recently led a session for Charity Learning Consortium members that challenged a common assumption: that defining future skills is the hardest part of change. Drawing on insights from Building Tomorrow’s Skills in Today’s Charities, he made the case that the real challenge isn’t identifying the right skills, but creating the conditions for them to grow.

The session sparked practical, honest conversations about embedding learning into everyday work, building resilience, and enabling meaningful change in increasingly complex environments. Here are Andy’s key takeaways from that discussion.

2. Resilience is misunderstood and underdeveloped

Resilience shows up everywhere in the actions, but almost as a question rather than an answer. People know it matters. They’re just not convinced we’ve really figured it out.

There’s a shift in thinking away from just “coping” towards something more dynamic. Growing through challenge, adapting and even thriving. But that’s not the everyday experience for many who attended. The reality, for some, is feeling very stretched in constantly managing competing demands.

And that creates a quiet contradiction. We talk about building resilient people, while operating in systems that wear them down. It’s not a criticism. It’s just where many people are.

Resilience is something we design into the way organisations work.

3. Learning is happening – but not always recognised

There’s something quite hopeful in the responses. Learning is alive and happening in conversations, shared experiences, moments of reflection, and in seeing something through someone else’s eyes. 

But it’s easy to miss because it doesn’t always look like learning in the traditional sense. So, it slips under the radar. And when that happens, organisations default back to what they can see and measure, which is understandable but limiting.

The opportunity here isn’t to create more learning. It’s to notice what’s already there and build around it. None of this happens by accident and doesn’t always sustain itself. It needs light-touch structure with tools, conversations, and collaboration that make learning easier to sustain.

Key thought:

Some of the most powerful learning is already happening, we’re just not always validating it.

4. Skills need to be embedded not added on

There’s a clear message; people don’t have space for “extra” learning. Not in the way it’s often designed. So, the ask is simple, although not necessarily easy. Make development part of the job, not something that sits alongside it or that happens when time allows. Because in reality time rarely does! 

This is about weaving skills into the fabric of work. Into roles, projects and how people operate and grow across the organisation. It sounds obvious when you say it out loud. But it asks us to rethink some pretty established habits.

There’s also a thread around progression and recognition. Development isn’t just about capability, it’s about identity. People need to see where their skills take them and feel that progression is recognised. Otherwise, development can start to feel intangible, something you’re asked to do, rather than something that moves you forward.

Key thought:

If learning feels like an add-on, it may well be the first thing to go.

5. Leadership is shifting – but unevenly

There’s a sense that the brief for leadership has changed. It’s less about having the answers and more about creating the conditions. That means listening, being open and sometimes being a bit more human than we’re used to seeing. 

For some leaders, that’s already happening, for others, it’s harder. Old habits run deep and senior teams can become echo chambers without meaning to. And not everyone has been supported to lead in this different way.

We might be assuming people know how to do this already. That’s a risky assumption. 

Key thought:

We’re asking leaders to show up differently… but we need to help them get there.

6. Connection and community are critical

One of the strongest areas of feedback is relief. That sense of  “it’s not just us.” 

There’s real value in hearing how others are navigating similar challenges. Not because it gives perfect answers, but because it opens up possibilities.

Learning at CLC is clearly social. It happens through dialogue, relationships, and networking that stretch beyond the participant’s organisations. Even the idea of bringing back former volunteers as mentors speaks to that, knowledge doesn’t disappear when someone leaves unless we let it.

There’s something bigger here about how capability flows; not just how it’s built.

Key thought:

We don’t build future skills alone; we build them together.

7. Tension between ambition and reality 

You can feel the stretch in the responses. On one hand, there’s energy for change and a recognition that things need to evolve. On the other, there’s the reality of limited time, competing priorities, and, in some cases, resistance. 

There’s a practical edge to this. Capacity isn’t endless. If we don’t design with that in mind, learning risks becoming part of the problem, not the solution and another demand in an already pressured system.

So, this becomes less about designing the perfect strategy and more about working with human dynamics such as motivation, energy and capacity.

It’s messier than we’d like; but more honest.

Key thought:

Change happens not just by design, but when people are ready and able to engage.

8. Future skills are not new – just more urgent

When you strip it back, the skills people are pointing to are familiar; resilience, agility, leadership, communication, curiosity, reflection and building relationships. 

We’ve known about these for years, but what’s changed is the context. Things are moving faster and feel less certain. The margin for error is smaller, so these deeply human skills carry more weight than they used to.

They’re not just “nice to have” anymore; they’re what keep organisations moving and successful.

That’s the shift; not new skills but new expectations.

Key thought:

The future requires skills we’ve always needed, but at a higher level with less room to ignore them.

In conclusion, the real challenge isn’t about naming the right future skills. It’s about creating the kind of work environment where those skills can actually take root and grow. Because the future isn’t just asking more of people, it’s asking us to rethink the conditions we place around them. And until the way work is designed starts to shift, those skills will stay as good intentions rather than something people can build in the reality of their day-to-day.