Dennis Di Lorenzo on How Outdated Job Architectures Are Holding Back Workforce Reinvention

If you're still relying on job architectures to shape your workforce strategy, you're building the future of work on a crumbling foundation. In this Skills Connect conversation, Micron’s Dennis DiLorenzo—former higher ed leader turned workforce strategist—joins Reejig CEO Siobhan Savage to explain why “skills” alone don’t cut it anymore, why job descriptions are practically useless, and what needs to happen next to build a business-ready, AI-augmented workforce.

Here are five bold takes for anyone serious about workforce transformation.

1. The Skills Hype Is Distracting Us From the Real Work

Skills aren’t the goal—capability is. Dennis puts it plainly: the business doesn’t care what someone knows—it cares whether they can deliver value today.

“Skills are just a placeholder for workforce productivity... The real question is, can they perform the task and deliver value now?”

Bold Take:
Stop framing workforce strategies around abstract skill taxonomies. Start building task-level capability models that show what people can actually do—and how fast they can do it.

2. AI Is Not a Tool. It’s a New Type of Worker.

CEOs aren’t talking about AI in terms of enablement—they’re talking about it as a margin machine. Meanwhile, HR is still stuck thinking about workforce impacts, not business outcomes.

“AI isn’t working alongside people anymore—people have to work alongside AI. If you don’t adapt, your business will be outmoded fast.”

Bold Take:
HR leaders must reposition themselves. This isn’t about employee experience—it’s about redesigning your workforce so humans and agents can deliver outcomes together.

3. Your Job Architecture Is Holding Back Transformation

Job architectures weren’t built to describe work. They were built to support compensation frameworks. That’s a problem when work is now fluid, dynamic, and increasingly automated.

“HR took something that belongs to the business—work—and labeled it for fairness, not functionality. That model is completely broken.”

Bold Take:
Ditch static job models. Build dynamic task-based infrastructures that reflect how work actually happens. If you can’t see the work, you can’t reengineer it.

4. Learning Strategies Are Out of Sync with Business Reality

Most L&D teams are still designing two-year learning journeys for jobs that won’t exist in 12 months. That’s not skilling. That’s wasting time—and trust.

“People are doing courses for jobs they think are the future. Then two years later, those jobs are gone. That’s unacceptable.”

Bold Take:
Shift to real-time, task-adjacent learning. Build “just-in-time” learning systems that help people pivot as work evolves—not after it’s disappeared.

5. Career Pathing Is Dead. Think Work Pathing Instead.

Forget long-term career ladders. The future is modular, fluid, and function-first. It's about short, high-impact jumps based on business needs and individual capability.

“I don’t even call it career pathing anymore. It’s work pathing. We’re preparing people for functions, not boxes.”

Bold Take:
Reshape how you talk about mobility. Replace static role progression with dynamic work orchestration models that match people to meaningful, value-generating tasks.

Conclusion: Rebuild the Foundation Now—or Fall Behind

The AI-powered workforce isn’t a nice-to-have—it’s already here. But if your underlying infrastructure still depends on job architectures, outdated systems, or siloed thinking, you’re setting yourself up to fail. As Dennis puts it:

“We designed HR systems for talent processes, not for the business. That’s why we’re falling behind.”

It’s time to reframe the conversation. Start with work. Build task-level intelligence. Align it to business objectives. And never forget: responsible workforce transformation means no one gets left behind.

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