What 15 CapabilityPrints™ taught us about modern work

After analyzing 15 CapabilityPrints™ across organizations including Delta Air Lines, Coca-Cola, Adobe, Visa, HubSpot, LEGO, Schneider Electric, Atlassian, Canva, McKinsey, Siemens Healthineers, and Deloitte, a surprising pattern has emerged.

The jobs aren't changing.

The capability requirements are.

In many cases, the capabilities have changed more than the job itself.

Across 15 very different roles, we repeatedly found data-related capabilities appearing where most people wouldn't expect them.

A Flight Attendant role built on governance, ethics, and decision making.

A Production Assembler role dependent on data collection, quality assurance, and information management.

A Corporate Communications role functioning more like an intelligence role.

A Product Designer role relying on evidence interpretation as much as creativity.

A Retail Performance role centered on stakeholder alignment rather than retail operations.

What's striking is that none of these organizations have renamed these roles.

The titles remain familiar.

The work appears familiar.

The underlying capability requirements do not.

This creates a challenge for workforce planning, learning, recruitment, and leadership.

Many organizations are still managing roles based on what they used to require.

Not what they require now.

We're only 15 CapabilityPrints into this research, but one conclusion is already becoming difficult to ignore: capability transformation appears to be happening much faster than job architecture, competency models, and workforce frameworks can adapt.

The jobs haven't changed.

The capabilities have.

What role in your organization would most surprise people if they saw the capabilities actually required to succeed?

Definitions on this page are based on the Capability Intelligence Reference.