Geese Do Not Improvise the Journey

Migration requires destination, capabilities, distance, and time. A reflection on workforce planning before the journey begins.

Geese do not improvise the journey

Series: What nature already knew about talent · 6/6 · Workforce planning

When in October you see a flock of geese flying in a V formation, you are witnessing the end of a story that began in August.

Weeks before taking off, geese change. They eat much more than they need, accumulating fat reserves that in some migratory species can double the weight of the animal. Their sleep shortens and a restlessness appears that ornithologists call by its German name, Zugunruhe, the unease prior to migration. In birds with longer journeys, the change occurs inside the body: the digestive organs shrink to save weight and the flight muscle grows. The animal reconfigures itself for what the journey will demand, not for what the present demands of it.

And then there is the V. Flying in formation reduces effort: each bird relies on the air disturbed by the one in front, and studies with birds equipped with sensors have measured significant decreases in heart rate compared to solo flight. But the tip of the V does not have that relief. The one in front works harder than anyone. That’s why they rotate. This has been documented in detail with GPS-equipped Eurasian spoonbills: individuals take turns in the lead position, and the time each one spends in front corresponds to the time others have spent in front for them.

Advance preparation and organized relief. That is what makes the journey possible.

What the goose knows

Notice what the goose, unknowingly, has figured out.

It knows where it is going and when, and therefore knows what the journey will demand: so much distance, so much energy, so many days. It knows its current state in relation to that. And it starts to close the distance in time, because a goose that tries to gain weight the week of departure will not make it.

It also knows that the tip cannot be sustained indefinitely by anyone, and that if the one in front exhausts without relief, the entire flock loses formation.

Strategy, current capabilities, distance, and time to close it. That is workforce planning. And it is what almost no organization does.

How we plan

Most companies have a strategic plan. For twelve, twenty-four, or thirty-six months, with fairly clear business objectives: enter a market, launch a line, digitize an operation, integrate an acquisition.

What it almost never has is the translation of that plan into capabilities. The plan says, "we are going to do this"; it does not say, "and to do this we need so many people who know how to do that at this level, we have so many, and we will cover the difference this way." The strategy is written in one place and the capabilities are stored in another, and no one contrasts one with the other with evidence.

So the workforce is planned by headcount and budget, and capabilities are discovered when they are lacking. The project is launched, the team does not arrive, an urgent vacancy opens, the vacancy takes months, and the plan is delayed. It’s the goose trying to gain weight the week of the journey.

And there is a second, quieter loss. Since we do not know what capabilities we have, we also do not know who is holding the tip of the V. In every organization, there are people on whom everything else relies, and who have been there for years without relief because no one has looked at who could replace them. When they leave or exhaust, the formation breaks, and then what they knew is discovered.

The journey of the healthcare sector

An example with our own data, because it illustrates well the anticipation that is needed.

This quarter we analyzed around half a million job offers to understand the demand for profiles and capabilities in the healthcare sector. We curated a universe of 176 strictly healthcare profiles, with over 186,000 active jobs, and looked at what was growing and where.

All 81 profiles for which we had time series were growing. Without exception. With quarterly increases of between one hundred and more than one thousand percent. It is a sector with no signs of saturation anywhere: structural shortage of healthcare talent, not a peak.

But what is interesting is where it is growing. The volume is in direct care, not in high specialization: social and health care and nursing account for more than forty percent of the demand. The acceleration is in rehabilitation: five of the ten profiles that are growing the most are in physiotherapy, occupational therapy, and podiatry, and the most accelerated capabilities in the sector are in physical assessment of the patient. And of the hundred most demanded skills, ninety are transversal to care: comprehensive attention, multidisciplinary work, communication, documentation.

Now put yourself in the shoes of someone managing people in a hospital group, a network of residences, or a health insurer. That report tells them where the journey is going: towards proximity, chronicity, and rehabilitation. It tells them what it will demand: hands next to the patient with a common care base and, on top of that, functional assessment capabilities. And it tells them something that changes the training strategy: since the core of skills is transversal, reskilling pathways can be short. A common base can be built and fed with it several profiles at once.

What that report cannot tell them is where their workforce stands in relation to that. They only know if they measure it. And when they measure it, they have the two halves: what the journey will demand and the reserves they have. The distance between both is their workforce plan, and the decision for each segment is the same as always: train, move, or hire, and when.

A map that breathes

There is one last thing that geese do well and we do poorly: they make the journey again every year, and every year they prepare again.

Many organizations have once made a capabilities map. Almost all did it as a project: a consultancy, a few months, a document. And the document aged before the year was over, because the strategy changed, people changed, and no one updated it. A capabilities map that is not measured again is a snapshot of last year's journey.

The map must breathe to the rhythm of the business. Quarterly, semi-annually, whatever the strategy requires. With the hires, departures, and position changes coming in automatically, and with the measurement repeating so that the picture remains current. Only then does the question "Do we have the talent for what’s coming?" have an answer when someone asks it in a committee, and not six months later.

At The Wise Skill, we build exactly that: connecting what the business will demand with what people know and can do, based on an evaluated capability map, not deduced, and updated periodically. It is the synthesis of everything I have shared in this series: the peacock and the evidence, the weaver and the same rule for everyone, the crab and the vacancy chain, the crow and the targeted training, the wolf and the changing tasks. Each animal represented a decision. This is the plan that organizes them.

But the question, as in all previous installments, can be asked tomorrow, the next time the strategic plan is discussed.

When do we take off, and how much do we weigh today?

If you have a plan for twelve or twenty-four months, a new business, a digitalization, an integration, and it needs to be translated into people, message me directly and we’ll look at it with your profiles. And if you want the complete report on the healthcare sector, ask me for it there too.

End of the series. Thank you for reading this far.