What causes successful organizations to fail? What makes stocks fade, innovations slow, customers jump ship? We can agree that certain skills are essential. That hiring coders who can’t code, salespeople who can’t sell, or architects who can’t design is a waste. But these skills — let’s call them vocational skills — have become the backbone of the recruitment process.

But how do you explain that similar organizations, with similarly vocationally skilled people, find themselves with very different outcomes? Most of the textbooks that students experience and the tests they take are about vocational skills, the checkboxes that have to be checked to get a job. By misdefining “vocational” and focusing on these allegedly essential skills, we’ve diminished the value of the other skills that matter.

We give too little respect to the other skills when we call them “soft” and imply that they’re optional. What actually separates thriving organizations from struggling ones are the difficult-to-measure attitudes, processes and perceptions of the people who do the work.