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"Let’s start with something we can all agree on: people and their skills matter for business performance."
With these words, Rose Keen, Content and Insight Director at Econsultancy, opened May’s Capability Leaders Forum. In an era where technological disruption and shifting consumer behaviors dominate the C-suite agenda, the conversation has moved away from which software to purchase and toward the fundamental human architecture required to survive and thrive.
For many organizations, the realization is sobering: while businesses are quick to invest in the latest martech stacks, the return on those investments is frequently throttled by a lack of internal proficiency. As Econsultancy’s research indicates, the most consistent differentiator between market leaders and their struggling competitors is the depth and effectiveness of their investment in human capital. However, as the forum’s expert panel highlighted, simply throwing budget at training is no longer enough. The challenge for 2026 and beyond is building programs that are as agile as the market they operate in.
The Panel: A Brain Trust of Capability Leaders
The forum brought together a cross-section of industry heavyweights to dissect the mechanics of modern marketing capability. The panel included:
- Abi Willstead, Head of Brand & Marketing Excellence at Specsavers
- Dan Southern, Director of Marketing Capabilities at Kimberly-Clark
- Michelle Atkinson, Head of Marketing Capability at Carlsberg Britvic
- Paul Davies, Managing Director at Econsultancy
Together, they explored the delicate balance between the "evergreen" skills that define marketing excellence and the "emerging" skills necessitated by the rapid adoption of Artificial Intelligence and automation.
The Core Mandate: Relevance to the "Day Job"
A recurring theme throughout the forum was the dangerous "relevance gap." Capability programs often fail because they exist in a vacuum, disconnected from the daily pressures, technological constraints, and cultural realities of a marketer’s actual role.
"Whether the learning is really transferring through to the day-to-day is one of the key challenges," noted Abi Willstead of Specsavers. Her sentiment was echoed across the panel: if a new skill cannot be applied within the next 48 hours of a marketer’s workflow, it is effectively dead on arrival.
The Friction of Implementation
Even when training is relevant, it is often undermined by organizational friction. If a marketer learns a new data-driven technique but is barred from accessing the necessary tools, or if the internal culture views the new process with skepticism, the skill withers. The panel concluded that capability building is not merely an educational task; it is a structural and cultural one.
Econsultancy’s research underscores the urgency of this, revealing that only one in five marketers feels their organization is capable of responding to emerging skills needs in real-time. This inability to pivot, the panelists argued, is the single greatest risk to long-term competitiveness.
Chronology of Strategy: From Foundations to Evolve
The forum introduced a strategic framework for managing this transition: the distinction between "Evergreen" and "Evolve" skills.
Phase 1: Establishing the Foundation (Evergreen Skills)
The panel reached a consensus that organizations must "raise the floor" before they can reach for the ceiling. Evergreen skills—core competencies like brand strategy, customer insight, and financial literacy—are the bedrock of the profession.
"The first thing we did at Specsavers was really lean into those evergreen skills," Willstead explained. "Those foundational skills were needed to raise the floor. Now, we’re in a position of really going after more of the ‘Evolve’ part of the model."
Phase 2: Targeted Evolution
Once the fundamentals are secured, the focus shifts to "Evolve" skills. These are the fast-moving, often volatile capabilities required to navigate new technologies. Michelle Atkinson of Carlsberg Britvic highlighted the necessity of this dual-track approach: "I look at the brand-building program we’re launching. We are looking to land those core skills that marketers need. But alongside those, we have leadership skills and we have future skills."
This dual-track strategy prevents a common pitfall: the obsession with "shiny object syndrome." By grounding teams in the fundamentals, organizations ensure that when they do adopt new tools—like GenAI—they have the critical thinking skills to wield them effectively rather than becoming over-reliant on them.
Supporting Data and Industry Insights
The forum relied on Econsultancy’s proprietary research to frame the discussion. Several key data points served as the baseline for the panel’s conclusions:
- The Performance Gap: Businesses that prioritize people and skills consistently outperform their market peers, yet only a small fraction of these businesses claim to have a "highly effective" learning strategy.
- The Half-Life of Skills: As Rose Keen noted, the half-life of marketing skills has never been shorter. A tool that is industry-leading today may be obsolete in six months, placing a premium on "learning agility" over static knowledge.
- Engagement Deficit: Many firms invest in sophisticated Learning Management Systems (LMS) only to find them empty of users within a year. The data shows that access to content does not equate to engagement with learning.
Official Perspectives: The "Library vs. Gallery" Analogy
One of the most potent contributions came from Paul Davies, Managing Director at Econsultancy, who utilized a vivid analogy to explain the failure of modern learning platforms.
"I like to use the analogy of a library versus a gallery," Davies stated. "If you walk into a library and you don’t know what you’re looking for, it is confusing. But a gallery, where everything is curated for you, is a better experience."
Most companies, he argued, build libraries: massive, disorganized repositories of courses that overwhelm the user. High-performing companies build galleries: curated, personalized learning journeys that guide the marketer toward what they need, exactly when they need it.
The "Puncture" Philosophy
Michelle Atkinson expanded on this by highlighting the importance of "just-in-time" learning. "Nobody wants to learn how to change a tyre until they get a puncture," she remarked. "Then you want to learn how to change a tyre real quick."
Capability programs must mirror this reality. Rather than forcing employees through generic curricula, forward-thinking organizations are mapping learning to specific project milestones and career inflection points.
Implications: Capability as Transformation
The final consensus of the forum was that capability building has graduated from an HR concern to a strategic imperative. As the industry grapples with the integration of AI agents and automated workflows, the human element—judgment, ethics, and critical thinking—becomes more, not less, valuable.
The Rise of Critical Thinking
Dan Southern, Director of Marketing Capabilities at Kimberly-Clark, emphasized that the shift toward AI-generated output necessitates a doubling down on human oversight. "As our workflows become more reliant on artificial intelligence and LLMs producing outputs, we’ve got to make sure that the marketers within our community have very strong critical thinking skills."
The implication is clear: technology doesn’t replace the marketer; it elevates the requirements for what the marketer must do. The ability to verify, interpret, and contextualize AI-driven insights is the next great frontier in professional development.
A New Definition of Success
The panel concluded that successful capability programs are "transformation in disguise." They are not about checking boxes or completing training modules; they are about fostering a culture of curiosity.
When Dan Southern joined Kimberly-Clark 18 months ago, he inherited a landscape of isolated, uninspiring content. His mission was to change the internal narrative—to stop treating learning as a compliance task and start treating it as a competitive advantage. This shift toward "learning agility" is the ultimate goal.
Conclusion
The May Capability Leaders Forum served as a stark reminder that in the face of rapid technological disruption, the most valuable asset any company owns remains its people. However, that asset is only as valuable as the support system surrounding it.
By rejecting the "library" model of passive access, focusing on the bedrock of "evergreen" foundations, and embracing a "gallery" approach to curated, just-in-time learning, marketing leaders can turn their capability programs into engines of growth. As the industry moves into the second half of 2026, the mandate is clear: build for the future, but do so by anchoring every lesson in the reality of today’s work.
Capability building is no longer a peripheral activity; it is the heartbeat of business transformation. For those who can master this art, the rewards are not just a more skilled workforce, but a more resilient, innovative, and market-responsive organization.
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