Skills Quotient

The Skills Quotient (SQ) is the operational core of The Expertise Economy — Palmer and Blake’s proposed metric for quantifying workforce capability. The formula is “the skills you have divided by the skills you need (then multiplied by 100).” Its stated goals are twofold: to measure how well-equipped a person or workforce is to perform at potential, and to “signal the potential threats and opportunities within an organization.” A notable design choice: anyone with an SQ above 90 gets flagged for immediate review — “because these high performers will likely look for their next growth opportunity elsewhere if they aren’t given one within the company.” The book frames SQ as the move from assuming human capital to measuring it (Quantifying Human Capital), and pairs it with the company-side reading of Self-Knowledge (employees building learning plans from a clear sense of where they stand). The example given: a supply-chain master’s program that measures graduates against target skill levels and tracks program quality by SQ over time.

Where this appears

• The Expertise Economy — the book’s central metric (SQ = skills you have ÷ skills you need × 100); used to measure capability, flag flight-risk high performers above 90, and operationalize treating human capital as something you measure.