Skills and capabilities

The Matrix above showcases skills grouped by function-specific capabilities. What is the relationship between skills, functions and capabilities?

Skills can be learned and enable workers to accomplish tasks. Skills are specific, they can be practiced and improved. Skills are the basic building blocks of what people know to do work. For example, reading comprehension is a foundational basic skill - defined as the ability to understand written sentences and paragraphs in work-related documents.

In the matrix above, "skills" are split into three categories: functional skills, technical tools and behaviours and mindsets. Functional skills describe role-relevant capabilities, technical tools refer to the use of technology to perform tasks and solve problems and behaviours and mindsets reflect the ways individuals think, their attitudes, how they collaborate and how they respond to change. All skills, technical tools, behaviours and mindsets were cross referenced with Lightcast's Skills Taxonomy (as of May 2026). If a skill, technical tool, behaviour or mindset, or equivalents with slightly different labels, did not yet appear in that Skills Taxonomy, it was labeled as "new."

A capability is an output that organizations must be able to deliver. Capabilities depend upon the combination of people, processes, technology and knowledge working together and it is defined by the outcome it produces. Skills enable organizational capabilities. Grouping skills by capabilities provides a map so that organizations can determine, based on the outcomes they need to deliver, what skill gaps need to be filled.

Connection to Functions and Workflows

Skills, tools, behaviours and mindsets enable workers to perform tasks, which are delimited activities of work. A task is small enough to be assigned, finished and checked off a list. For instance, a worker may leverage their reading comprehension skill to understand the step-by-step instructions to complete a form.

Workflows are structured series of tasks or steps through which work flows to deliver an outcome. It defines how information, materials and decisions move between people, systems and machines.

A function is one of the major areas of work an organization needs to carry out to deliver on its purpose. It groups together the workflows that share a common goal. For example, the logistics function covers the movement and storage of materials and goods. The combination of outcomes produced by capabilities roll up to functions.

In sum, workflows represent how work is being done, while capabilities represent what the organization wishes to deliver. They are complementary views: workflows show the path, capabilities show the outcome, skills make both possible.

Loughborough University

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