AstraZeneca’s 4-year Odyssey with skills intelligence | Lara Martinez, Global Director of Talent Intelligence, on why agility beats the SBO label

Everyone wants a “skills-based organization.” Almost no one has built one. 

At AstraZeneca, Global Director of Talent Intelligence Lara Martinez Gonzalez has spent four years connecting a tangle of recruitment systems, development platforms, and job architecture into one language for the workforce, and she’s blunt about how hard it has been. 

In this episode, she argues skills is a data problem, not an HR project, explains why she refuses to say the word “skills” in front of business leaders, and shows where the value has actually landed so far. Plus the trap that cost her almost a year, and the company she’s seen get closest to skills-native.

Timestamps:

• 00:57 — The one skills claim leaders should push back on

• 02:05 — Four years of skills work, told as an Odyssey

• 05:46 — How to pick which problem to solve first

• 10:48 — Why she drops the word “skills” in business meetings

• 16:30 — Reading the market: from skills to tasks

• 20:19 — Who should own tasks:  HR or the business?

• 21:54 — The honest ROI: “still squeezing the lemon”

• 31:32 — Her 90-day advice to peers two years in