Co-authored by Sumit Aggarwal and Madhav K
Every discussion about AI these days descends into how AI will eat jobs.
But tech has always changed which skills matter. This feels different because it’s disrupting white-collar work. When automation replaced factory workers, when ATMs reduced bank tellers, when digital cameras devastated Kodak—we called it progress. Now that it’s affecting people who work on computers, it feels like a crisis.
What if we’re measuring the wrong things?
Consider the family business. We cry nepotism when a relative is promoted over “qualified” outsiders. Yet, this relative often manages people more knowledgeable and skilled than them.
Skills exist in two layers. The visible, surface layer: technical acumen, coding, data analysis, sales, marketing, communications.
Then there’s the foundation layer: the bedrock of personality. These are the CORE human traits valued across industries and eras. Technical skills can be bought. CORE cannot be purchased so easily.
What Is the CORE Framework?
Beyond technical expertise, businesses are looking for answers to deeper questions:
Can I trust you to deliver when I’m not looking over your shoulder? Will you take ownership when things go sideways? Do you understand the bigger picture? Are you honest about what you don’t know?
These questions crystallize into four traits that outlast any technical skill:
1. Conscious Life Design
You understand your own constraints and make intentional choices that minimize internal conflict. Your tradeoffs are deliberate, not accidental.
You are not constantly torn between competing priorities because you’ve already resolved them consciously.
When you commit to something, you are fully present, not battling ‘should I be somewhere else?’ guilt. This presence itself becomes reliability.
Example: One person may choose a joint family structure to reduce day-to-day caregiving crises. Another may consciously decline roles involving heavy travel because they know it will create resentment or depletion.
What matters is the self-awareness to design your life proactively rather than operating in a state of constant friction and reactive compromise. It does not mean doing more. It means removing avoidable conflict, so your contribution is steady, calm, and sustainable for long.
2. Ownership Mentality
When something is assigned to you, it becomes fully yours.
You don’t wait for instructions; you take responsibility for understanding not just the task, but the purpose behind it. You anticipate problems before they surface and address gaps others haven’t noticed yet. You own outcomes, not just outputs.
You do not say, “I did my part.”
You say, “Has the job actually been accomplished?”
This does not mean doing everything alone. It means coordinating, looping in stakeholders, and ensuring your responsibility reaches a stable, functioning, and meaningful conclusion.
Over time, you create a reputation: When assigned to you, the task is as good as done.
And that reputation compounds — in trust, influence, and opportunities for larger responsibility.
3. Reliability
Reliability is not perfection, but consistency under uncertainty. You remain steady and solutions-oriented rather than reactive or avoidant.
You are the person others know will figure it out. Not because you always have the answers, but because you stay with the problem until a workable path emerges. You exhaust every reasonable option before raising the white flag.
You do not leave others in the lurch. Even when you eventually move on, you ensure proper handover and succession. The system is intact after you.
4. Ethics
You make decisions that are fair, transparent, and responsible toward all stakeholders — colleagues, customers, suppliers, the organization, and even the wider society.
You don’t optimize for short-term personal gain at the expense of long-term collective value. You consider second-order and long-term consequences, flag issues early, and act in ways that preserve dignity and continuity.
In negotiations, you are as quick to admit when you’re being offered more than you deserve as you are to push back when shortchanged. This prevents the silent erosion of culture, goodwill, and institutional reputation — the real assets of any organization. This preserves your capacity to keep adding real value.
In an era of quiet quitting and résumé inflation, this behavioral clarity and consistency creates a real competitive advantage. Because others know how you will act even under pressure.
The Truth We Keep Forgetting
Understanding these traits reveals why the family business intuition was right all along.
The most valuable individuals have always been those who could absorb uncertainty for others.
That family member gets chosen because they demonstrate CORE traits where outsiders have only shown technical competence: trustworthiness under uncertainty, willingness to shoulder problems, ability to think like an owner rather than an employee.
We once preferred a junior contractor to a big-name firm for a construction project. We had worked with them both, but the junior demonstrated the ability to think on his feet in our interests, ensured the work got going despite fluctuating labor and raw material availability. Once assigned to him, we could rest assured the work would be done as if we were doing it ourselves.
Businesses lean towards people who say, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll take care of it.” This assurance—the willingness to shoulder problems—holds every system together.
It explains why a contractor earns more than the laborer doing harder physical work. The contractor isn’t paid for effort, but for accountability under uncertainty. From empires to modern corporations, those trusted to deliver despite chaos hold greater value than those who merely execute instructions well.
Every new tool, from the plough to AI, automates what once demanded human mastery. Yet no tool has ever replaced dependability. Society pays a premium for the assurance that the outcome will be achieved.
The Career Arc Nobody Tells You About
Skills get you the job. Without them, you don’t even get in the room.
But CORE gives you an unassailable competitive advantage once you’re in.
Initially, you get promoted because you’re the best coder, analyst, or marketer.
After that, growth comes from demonstrating CORE.
Can they trust you with bigger problems? Will you take ownership beyond your job description? Can you be relied upon when things get messy?
This is why leaders from completely different industries get hired for top roles: they know how to get the right people to work effectively. Leadership is applied CORE—trustworthiness scaled across teams.
In the AI era, as in-demand technical skills change faster than ever, this matters even more.
The Measurement Problem
Modern hiring systems focus on skills because they’re easy to test. Where these testing systems are no longer reliable, trust-based referrals have a comeback.
Since CORE is revealed through behavior, they can be used as a cover to perpetuate existing hierarchies. However, the solution lies not in discarding CORE, but in finding innovative ways to assess it.
There was a time when credit access was largely available only to established players. Why? Because there was no way to objectively ascertain a person’s credit-worthiness. In its absence, it was safer to default to well-established names.
How did we fight this information opacity? By introducing CIBIL score. Now, people who were credit-worthy, regardless of their background, became eligible for credit too.
Likewise, assessing CORE requires newer approaches. If CORE could be measured as easily as technical skills, merit itself would look very different.
The Jugaad Sach
Skills deliver outputs. CORE delivers outcomes.
The human who quietly assures, “Don’t worry, I’ll take care of it,” will remain indispensable.
The future will belong to those who can be trusted to lead without supervision—to those whose presence radiates confidence rather than adds anxiety.
That is the CORE.
And that—is a Jugaad Sach.
Which CORE trait do you see undervalued in your industry?
Musings by Madhav 
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