Tech skills need constant updating as technologies and solutions evolve. Need evidence? One-third of the skills listed in job postings in 2017 were obsolete just four years later, according to Gartner.
Given how rapidly technologies like AI have transformed IT, the pace has undoubtedly accelerated since then. As a result, many IT teams are facing skills gaps — which can create significant challenges for the organization in terms of innovation and delivering value for the business.
We asked the CIO Experts Network for advice toward transforming workforce skills deficiencies into opportunities. It starts with the right mindset, they say:
“As a business owner, I try to see skill gaps not as problems, but as chances to grow,” says Scott Schober, president and CEO at Berkeley Varitronics Systems. “If someone on the IT team doesn’t know a certain skill, that’s not the end of the world. In fact, I look at it as more of an opportunity to train them and help them grow into a more valuable role. That helps the business, too, because you’re building a team that can take on new challenges instead of always hiring from outside. IT leaders can use these gaps to look at what the business really needs moving forward. Instead of seeing that as a weakness, treat it as a step toward being more competitive and ready for what’s next.”
“For IT staff, gaps become chances for career advancement through learning new technologies and taking on strategic projects,” says Gene de Libero, principal at Digital Mindshare. “For the business, skills development creates more versatile teams that can adapt to market changes and drive transformation from within. This reframing transforms recruitment challenges into talent development initiatives that boost retention, engagement, and organizational resilience.”
A culture of continuous learning and cross-functional teams
The experts also suggest identifying where the gaps lie. “Skills inventories paired with strategic technology roadmaps can identify precisely where to invest in reskilling versus hiring, creating personalized development pathways that align with both organizational needs and individual career aspirations,” says Chris Selland, independent consultant, analyst and lecturer, Entrepreneurship & Innovation at Northeastern University D’Amore-McKim School of Business.
Next, seek ways to turn those gaps into gains:
“IT staff who have great learning aptitude must be guided toward continuous learning, focusing on keeping themselves close to new tech skill sets such as cloud engineering, cybersecurity, or AI solution creation. They relish the change and can be utilized as future-proof experts.” — Vivek Singh, senior vice president of IT and strategic planning at PALNAR
“Cross-functional rotation programs between IT and business units can simultaneously address technical knowledge gaps while enhancing business contextual understanding that often proves more valuable than specific technical skills. The most forward-thinking organizations are reimagining traditional roles entirely, creating hybrid positions that blend technical and business skills to better address emerging capabilities in areas like AI governance, business process automation, and data-driven decision support.” — Selland at Northeastern
“IT leaders can reframe IT workforce skill gaps as opportunities by partnering with the business to achieve shared goals like security, data accessibility, and operational efficiency. By investing in upskilling both IT and cross-functional business teams — especially in areas like cybersecurity, cloud, and AI — they build capabilities that directly support these objectives.” — Arsalan Khan, a speaker, advisor and writer on AI
If the organization doesn’t already have a culture of continuous learning, try conducting pilot projects for new technology deployments, suggests Will Kelly, a writer focused on AI and cloud. “Organizations adopting new platforms like AI or containers can build internal upskilling programs tied directly to actual pilot projects that’ll benefit the business. This approach keeps the learning relevant and gives staff a sense of purpose. It’s also an opportunity to bring FinOps and MLOps into the IT workflows. The real win here is showing staff that they’re not just filling gaps but also evolving with the business and setting the stage for long-term transformation.”
Leveraging AI to fill gaps
It’s difficult to talk about IT skills without mentioning AI’s ability to automate many tasks that, until recently, required a technology professional to complete.
“Many IT capabilities have been shifting left over the last two decades,” says Isaac Sacolick, bestselling author and president of StarCIO. “Employees can increase their value to the organization by developing data visualizations, building applications, and using agentic AI capabilities — with minimal IT assistance. IT has the opportunity to support this transformation by delivering self-service capabilities, centralizing information, and establishing best practices so that greater capabilities don’t increase technical debt or create new security risks.”
In addition to performing some IT tasks on its own, AI can also provide IT employees with a powerful learning tool that integrates upskilling into their daily work.
“Large language models have created an opportunity for IT leaders to help their organizations leapfrog into the future,” says Kumar Srivastava, CTO at Turing Labs. “By leveraging, incorporating, and assimilating LLMs into workflows, IT leaders arm their workforce with easily usable, readily applicable capabilities without having to invest to retrain their workforce using traditional training methodologies.”
Rather than viewing skills gaps as costly problems, IT leaders who embrace them as pathways for talent development will build more resilient, adaptable teams while simultaneously boosting employee engagement and retention. In an era where technological change is the only constant, the organizations that thrive will be those that see every skills gap not as a deficit to fill, but as an opportunity to evolve, innovate, and stay ahead of the curve.
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Watch this video to gain more insights into addressing skills gaps.