In my previous articles, I shared “Remembering 2027: 2 Paths through the digital forest” and discussed the Pope’s wake-up call for human-centred design. Today, I’ll complete this trilogy by outlining exactly what a Human Capability Architecture looks like for organisations navigating the AI revolution.
Why We Need a New Capability Framework
As AI transforms workplaces, organisations face a pivotal choice: will they merely manage this technological transition or spearhead a renaissance of uniquely human capabilities?
Our fictional tale of two professionals illustrated this divergence, but real-world evidence tells the same story. Organisations that thrive in the AI era will systematically build human capabilities to complement, not compete with, artificial intelligence.
The Six-Level Human Capability Stack
Based on extensive research and practical application across industries, we’ve identified six essential capability levels organisations must cultivate to thrive alongside AI. Each level builds upon the previous, creating a comprehensive approach that addresses individual development and collective organisational strengths.
Level 1: Human Needs First
Core Capability: The ability to centre all technological decisions around human needs and values.
This foundational level ensures that technology serves people rather than vice versa. It’s about keeping humans at the centre of technology decisions.
Key components include:
- Seeing the Design Opportunity: Identifying creative problem-solving opportunities across all organisational contexts
- Putting People Before Technology: Evaluating technologies based on human impact rather than technical impressiveness
- Asking Better Questions: Framing challenges from user perspectives using approaches like “How might we…?”
- Finding the Right Size Challenge: Scoping problems neither too narrowly nor too broadly
“The essence of organisational effectiveness is being able to achieve the outcomes you intend, and there are two disciplines that make up that journey to impact: innovation and change.” — ExperiencePoint, “The Secret to Enduring Competitive Advantage: What Game Changers Know”
Level 2: Understanding Real People
Core Capability: The ability to develop a deep, nuanced understanding of human experiences that data alone cannot capture.
While AI excels at analysing quantitative data, these capabilities focus on qualitative understanding that brings depth to data.
Key components include:
- Conversation That Reveals: Conducting interviews that elicit specific stories rather than general opinions
- Walking in Their Shoes: Directly experiencing user contexts to develop empathy and identify unspoken needs
- Mapping the Full Experience: Tracing complete user journeys to identify critical moments
- Finding the Deeper Story: Transforming observations into insights about underlying needs and motivations
“Customer-centricity can feel counterintuitive to managers who’ve spent their careers focused on business outcomes. But putting customer desire at the centre of every challenge is the most effective way to drive profit and deliver high-quality solutions that meet customer needs.” — ExperiencePoint, “5 Ways to Become Customer Obsessed”
Level 3: Finding Fresh Perspectives
Core Capability: Discovering unexpected viewpoints and possibilities that wouldn’t emerge from conventional analysis.
This level helps organisations break free from established patterns—exactly what AI systems, trained on historical data, struggle to do.
Key components include:
- Learning from Different Worlds: Identifying analogous solutions from different contexts
- Seeking Out Edge Cases: Studying extreme users to reveal needs invisible in the mainstream
- Connecting Unexpected Dots: Recognising meaningful patterns across seemingly unrelated situations
“Extreme users (lovers and haters, novices and experts) can tell you, or better yet, show you, exactly what’s good and bad about your offerings. They often inspire innovations that the average consumer would never lead you toward.” — ExperiencePoint, “5 Ways to Become Customer Obsessed”
Level 4: Creating & Testing Solutions
Core Capability: The ability to rapidly generate, visualise, and evaluate potential solutions through collaborative creation.
While AI can generate endless options, human judgment in evaluating and iterating on ideas remains essential.
Key components include:
- Group Creativity That Works: Structuring collaborative ideation to maximise creative output
- Quick-and-Rough Models: Creating low-fidelity representations that invite feedback and iteration
- Learning Through Experiments: Designing targeted tests to validate key assumptions with minimal resources
“Requiring minimal time, effort and expense, these models/visualisations allow the team to make instant changes and test new iterations quickly.” — ExperiencePoint, “Design Thinking 101”
“The goal of feedback is not to sell your vision, but to understand theirs.” — ExperiencePoint, ” Design Thinking 101″
Level 5: Bringing People Along
Core Capability: The ability to navigate the human dimensions of change, addressing both practical and emotional aspects.
This level addresses the human factors in technological transformation, ensuring people embrace new approaches.
Key components include:
- Mapping Key Relationships: Identifying and prioritising all stakeholders in a change initiative
- Creating Safety to Speak Up: Building environments where people express concerns without fear
- Addressing Resistance Productively: Understanding and responding constructively to concerns
- Getting Everyone on the Same Page: Clarifying what new approaches mean in terms of specific behaviours
- Designing for Desired Behaviours: Shaping environments that make desired behaviours easier
Level 6: Scaling Human-Centred Practices
Core Capability: The ability to institutionalise human-centred approaches across entire organisations.
This highest level ensures that human values remain central as systems scale—the transformative capability needed for sustained success.
Key components include:
- Telling Stories That Stick: Crafting compelling narratives about the human value of technological change
- Creating Shared Direction: Developing clear, memorable messages that align teams
- Keeping Focus on Outcomes: Maintaining attention on what matters to users throughout implementation
- Building It Into Everything: Embedding human-centred principles in organisational structures and processes
“Human-centred design becomes the new organisational operating system when it shifts from being a separate approach to problem-solving to becoming the core mindset and framework for how an organisation operates.” — People Power Blog.
How to Implement the Capability Stack
The Human Capability Stack isn’t just a theoretical framework—it requires systematic implementation. Here’s how organisations can approach building these capabilities:
1. Individual Development Pathways
Start by assessing your people’s current capabilities across all six levels. Then create targeted development plans that:
- Focus on building capabilities progressively, starting with foundations
- Apply capabilities directly to current work challenges
- Engage people in communities of practice for each capability area
- Continuously reassess and advance capabilities as AI evolves
“Consider that career progress is people’s No. 1 motivation to learn. When employees don’t move ahead, they leave and take their skills elsewhere.” — LinkedIn, “Workplace Learning Report 2025”
2. Team Capability Building
Teams need collective strength across the capability stack:
- Assess your team’s collective strengths and gaps
- Encourage team members to develop complementary specialisations
- Embed capabilities into team workflows and methodologies
- Share practices across different teams and disciplines
- Track team capability development alongside performance metrics
Organisations prioritising career development outperform others on a range of positive indicators. They’re more confident in their ability to be profitable and to attract and retain talent.” — LinkedIn, “Workplace Learning Report 2025”
3. Organisational Integration
For lasting impact, the capability stack must become part of your organisational DNA:
- Secure executive alignment on the value of human capabilities
- Create roles, processes, and policies that reinforce capabilities
- Invest dedicated resources in capability building
- Establish metrics that track capability development and impact
- Link recognition and advancement to capability demonstration
“The human-centred organisation exists to fulfil a purpose for its users, customers, and community, and orients all of its innovation and operations activities around those people.” — IBM, “Building a Human-Centred Organisation”
The ExperiencePoint Advantage
At People Power, we’ve partnered with ExperiencePoint to deliver immersive learning experiences that build these critical capabilities throughout organisations.
Their transformative solutions map directly to this capability stack:
- The ExperienceInnovation™ series develops the ability to identify human needs and create innovative solutions
- The ExperienceChange™ simulation builds change leadership capabilities essential for transformation
- Spark Microlearning Episodes series provides focused learning on specific capabilities, like finding fresh perspectives or quick prototyping.
These aren’t just workshops—they’re catalyst experiences that trigger lasting capability development when integrated into a comprehensive approach.
The Competitive Edge of Human Capabilities
In our work with organisations across Africa, we’ve seen firsthand how building these human capabilities creates a sustainable competitive advantage:
- Future-Proofing: Developing capabilities that complement rather than compete with AI
- Innovation Potential: Creating environments where human creativity flourishes
- Responsible Technology: Ensuring AI development reflects human values
- Talent Attraction: Building human-centred environments that draw top talent
“Organisations that excel in both people development and financial performance are four times as likely as peers to outperform financially and one and a half times as likely as peers to remain top tier year on year.” — McKinsey & Company, “A New Operating Model for People Management”
“Career development champions are 42% more likely to be frontrunners in GAI adoption compared to all others.” — LinkedIn, “Workplace Learning Report 2025”
Your Call to Action
As L&D professionals, you stand at a critical juncture. Will you focus narrowly on AI tool training? Or will you become an architect of human capabilities, defining your organisation’s future?
The Human Capability Stack offers a comprehensive framework for developing the distinctly human abilities that will remain essential as AI advances. It provides a map of what capabilities matter and a pathway for developing them at individual, team, and organisational levels.
“The companies that outlearn other companies will outperform them.” — Vidya Krishnan, Chief Learning Officer, Ericsson.
“AI adoption and career development are a unified strategy for agility.” — Naphtali Bryant, Talent Development Consultant.
In the AI era, your competitive advantage will increasingly come not from technology but from the human capabilities that direct it toward meaningful purposes. This architecture provides the foundation for that human advantage.
Are you ready to build the Human Capability Stack in your organisation? Share your thoughts in the comments below, and if you would like to know more please let me know & I’ll send you a free eBook on Human-Centred Design to help you take this reflection further.
