Skill Gap Map & Priority List

List the gaps you already know about, score them on what they cost you, and plan the top three through real work, other people and a little formal study, with a short debrief after every attempt.

Ranking gaps by impact and urgency is consulting craft. Learning through challenging work, other people and study comes from the lessons-of-experience research (McCall, Lombardo & Morrison, 1988); the popular 70-20-10 ratio is weak or contested (Clardy, 2018). Structured debriefs have strong meta-analytic support (Tannenbaum & Cerasoli, 2013; Keiser & Arthur, 2021). The scoring scales on this page are rules of thumb.

Use it when:

• You have feedback or a self-assessment and more things to work on than time to work on them.
• You are preparing a development conversation with your manager, a mentor or a client you report to.
• You are changing direction and need to know which gaps block the next role.

Skip it when:

• You do not know your gaps yet: start with 1.2 Strengths & Weaknesses Grid.
• You lead people and want a plan for the leadership side only: use 1.16 Leadership Development Plan.

Two ideas sit underneath this page. The first is consulting craft with no research claim attached: attention is scarce, so rank your gaps by consequence and work only the top few. The second comes from the lessons-of-experience tradition, built on interviews with executives about what actually developed them: challenging assignments, other people and formal study all played a part, with experience weighing most (McCall, Lombardo & Morrison, 1988). The numeric split later attached to that work (Lombardo & Eichinger, 1996) is weak or contested: the famous ratio does not appear in the original research and has been argued to be untestable. So this page keeps the three channels and drops the arithmetic.

The structure follows from that. Section 1 makes you score every gap before you choose, so the plan follows consequence rather than interest. Section 2 plans each priority across work, people and study, with courses as the smallest part. Section 3 adds a short debrief after each attempt, for the reason given in the note under Section 2, and Section 4 treats the plan as a bet: a priority that stays behind twice means the step is too big or the channel is wrong.

Write each gap as something you cannot yet do, not as a trait. Score Impact (how much it holds you back, 1 to 5) and Urgency (how soon you need it, 1 to 5), multiply, and take the three highest.

Strong answer: "Presenting test results to the plant management group. Impact 5: two of my proposals stalled last quarter because the group did not follow the case. Urgency 4: the budget round is in April." (Illustrative.)

My top three, in order, with scores:

Illustrative example: the role, the company and all scores are made up.

A quality engineer at a dairy producer in Sweden has feedback from a recent review and a long list of things to improve.

Section 1: five gaps scored. Presenting results to plant management (5 × 4 = 20), leading a small improvement team (4 × 4 = 16), negotiating test requirements with suppliers (4 × 3 = 12), statistical process control software (3 × 2 = 6), building a wider network (2 × 2 = 4). Top three: the first three.

Section 2: six-month horizon. Presenting: from level 2 to 4, by taking over the monthly quality report, with the production manager reviewing slides and a short internal course on presenting. Proof: proposals get decisions, not follow-up questions about method. Leading: from 1 to 3, by leading the packaging line improvement with two operators; help from an experienced shift manager. Negotiating: sit in on two supplier meetings with purchasing.

Section 3: a ten-minute debrief after every meeting, reviewed monthly with the production manager.

Section 4: after month two, presenting is on track; negotiating is behind twice, so the channel changes from "lead a meeting" to "second negotiator."