My speaking and consulting engagements to address skill shortages in manufacturing, health care, higher education, and high tech gives me a unique perspective on the challenges facing leaders striving to stay competitive despite changing skill needs. Here are three critical questions to keep asking yourself and your team to stay ahead of the rapidly changing market for talent.

1. Is your business sustainable with the talent you have? Is the market’s perception of your value changing the talent you need?

Are you a manufacturing association striving to keep members engaged? A liberal arts college that needs to be seen as effectively preparing its students for success in today’s workplace? Or a community hospital trying to stay independent in the era of Big Health?

To survive in a marketplace shaped by changing demographics, new technologies and globalization, keep questioning your organization’s value proposition and the talent needed to deliver on it. This isn’t a simple task. Even leading strategists at Harvard Business School are at odds about the future of that seemingly dominant institution. If wise guys like Michael Porter and Clayton Christensen are worried about the future of their business, you should be, too.

The first step is engaging with the core assumptions that underlie your current strategy. Are you testing those assumptions continually? The early fatalities will be organizations whose leaders are in denial about the macro changes that threaten their market position and the talent needed to maintain it.

2. Where will you get the talent needed to implement your strategy?

This is the first question the president of a global engineering firm asks his team when they propose new ideas for growing the business. Everybody is looking for talent! It may be the next generation of nurse managers, CNC machinists, experienced technical salespeople, a university career services director, or a new CEO.

There are lots of jobs today that have become extremely difficult to fill, either because they demand a complex set of skills and experience, or because they are, frankly, unattractive. Succession planning needs to be on every executive’s mind, and in a lot of cases you should already be thinking about “Plan B”. One manufacturing firm CEO recently told me he was making plans to reallocate the tasks of a key engineering role if the firm is unable to fill it.

3. Are you training for a marathon or are you burning yourself out in a sprint?

It’s both funny and sad when I talk with college presidents, manufacturing CEOs and association presidents about their work calendars. Is your schedule insane, too? We have created a lot of leadership roles that are unsustainable – or at least unattractive to potential successors. Are you taking care of yourself so you can prosper long term in an environment of relentless change and information overload? You’re not doing anybody any good by trying to sustain a frantic pace. Tony Schwartz and The Energy Project team do some great work on solutions for this problem.
If talent retention is a critical business objective, few things will be more effective than signaling to your employees that you genuinely care about them as individuals. In part, this means encouraging them to pursue exercise, meditation, yoga, a good diet, sleep, and disconnected down time. What behaviors are you modeling for your team – and your family? Are you investing in the essential regenerative practices needed to thrive long term? Indeed, managing your health is going to be a critical skill for staying in the game.

• Constantly look for competitive forces that threaten the sustainability of your business.
• Continually challenge assumptions about where you are going to recruit and retain the talent you need to remain competitive.
• Reinforce new habits to care for yourself physically, mentally and spiritually so you can stay vital for the long run.

These are three keys to competing in a work environment marked by relentless demands for new skills and productivity improvement.