The excellence shortage is a topic that is on the agenda in many technical writing departments right now. Here is what really matters in practice, beyond marketing claims and tool promises.
The excellence shortage: what counts in practice
By now it is part of the etiquette of every economic-policy debate to lament the skills shortage. Hardly an industry event, an interview, or a situation report gets by without the term. It is an explanatory pattern, an excuse, and a political lever all at once.
Yet the more often a term is used, the less anyone questions what it actually means – and where it actually applies.
The thesis I deliberately sharpen here is this:
The skills shortage is not the structural core problem of our future. It is a visible symptom. The real risk lies deeper – in a creeping excellence shortage that is only now building up.
Two completely different realities under one slogan
When we talk about the skills shortage, we finally have to draw a clean distinction.
There are activities whose value creation has to be delivered locally. Building a house, installing an electrical system, maintaining a production machine, care services, personal services – none of this can be shifted to Eastern Europe, Asia, or the cloud. Here value creation is physically bound. It happens on site or not at all.
In these areas we are indeed experiencing a structural bottleneck. Demographic change, the trend towards academic qualifications, declining apprenticeship numbers – all of this comes together here. The result is palpable: waiting times, rising prices, overloaded businesses. That is a real shortage.
But in many other areas – particularly in office work that can be digitalised – the situation looks fundamentally different.
Programming, accounting, marketing, controlling, administration, analysis, documentation: these are activities whose value creation is not necessarily tied to a geographical location. They are digital, can be standardised, are globally comparable – and increasingly automatable.
Here we are not experiencing a classic shortage. Here we are experiencing competition. And, by now, substitution too.
The quiet substitution by AI
Since late 2022 and early 2023, the pace of technological change has increased dramatically. Generative AI is no longer an experimental playground but a productive tool.
In 2023, Goldman Sachs spoke of up to 300 million full-time equivalents (FTE) worldwide potentially being affected by automation through AI. McKinsey shows in its analyses that knowledge-based activities in particular – those that are text-, data-, or code-based – are being automated faster than many physical jobs.
This is not a theoretical thought experiment. Companies are reducing content teams, slimming down marketing departments, automating accounting processes, replacing parts of support and analysis functions. In software development we observe a clear shift: less demand for pure implementation work, higher demand for architectural and strategic competence.
At the same time, paradoxical effects arise: some companies lay off staff in the course of AI efficiency programmes – and later find that the technology alone is not enough. But those brought back are usually not average profiles. They are experienced, deep, decisive experts.
That is the decisive point.
„Good enough“ becomes a value-for-money question
AI is neither brilliant nor visionary. It bears no responsibility and develops no original world views.
But in many areas it is good enough.
And that is precisely what changes the labour market fundamentally. Because when a machine delivers solid results in seconds, the below-average and the average knowledge worker lose their economic justification. Not for moral reasons, but for economic ones.
The value-for-money balance shifts. Only those who are excellent in their field then remain economically viable.
Anyone who merely reproduces, summarises, structures, or standardises competes directly with a scalable technology. Anyone who, by contrast, penetrates complex systems, takes on responsibility, develops new models, or makes strategic decisions is not replaced. They are upgraded instead.
The labour market is beginning to polarise. Between excellent and replaceable. In between it gets tighter; you will have to fight to justify your place in the company.
What does this scenario mean in terms of the “Gaussian normal distribution“? Following it, in an extreme case 60 % to 80 % of all current office workers could be replaced by AI or automation. What is likely, in any case, is that new firms will develop a completely different staffing structure from the outset and, as a matter of course, cover the standard processes with technology rather than with employees.
The real risk: how is excellence still created?
This is where the problem begins that, in the long run, weighs more heavily than any current skills shortage.
How does genuine depth still come about today?
In the past, expert development ran through hard, often lengthy learning processes. A young developer wrote code that failed. A senior corrected it. Architecture decisions were debated, discarded, rethought. Accountants learned balance-sheet logic from the ground up. Marketing strategists understood markets not only through dashboards but through experience.
Today, between the „newcomer“ and the problem stands an AI that proposes average solutions. That speeds up processes. But it also changes the nature of learning. Anyone who orients themselves towards mediocrity, is given mediocrity, and accepts mediocrity cannot become excellent without an additional drive of their own. When AI is our teacher and yardstick, the realm of excellence remains unknown and therefore out of reach.
Anyone who primarily curates instead of constructing develops a different competence structure. Anyone who integrates finished solution proposals instead of working them out themselves builds up less depth of understanding. In the short term, efficiency rises. In the long term, the number of those who really understand why systems work – or why they fail – may decline.
Excellence does not arise through access to information. It arises through penetration.
When this penetration becomes rarer, a new imbalance arises: many can operate tools. Few can design systems.
Germany and the question of ambition
Germany was never the cheapest location. Our competitiveness historically rested on quality, engineering, systems thinking. We were not successful because we scaled mediocrity, but because in certain disciplines we were better than the average.
But when „good enough“ becomes the norm, we lose precisely this differentiating factor.
For a high-wage country, mediocrity is not a stable strategy. If we deliver only average quality while other countries produce more cheaply, we lose structurally. Then it is only a matter of time before value creation migrates away.
Excellence is no luxury for us. It is a condition of survival.
Knowledge management is not enough
Of course companies have to secure expert knowledge. Precisely in times of staff turnover and demographic change, professional information management is essential. Knowledge must not hang on individuals. Processes have to be documented, experiences structured, systems transparent.
But knowledge management preserves what exists. It does not replace the development of new brilliance.
The real strategic question is:
How do we create environments in which genuine mastery arises again?
How do we ensure that young talents not only operate tools but learn to think?
How do we prevent ourselves from producing a generation that works efficiently – but never becomes exceptional?
The decision
The skills shortage will be with us for years to come – especially in those areas where value creation is locally bound. There we have to train, upskill, invest.
But in parallel another challenge arises:
When people in activities that can be digitalised lose their position or become interchangeable, they become available to the labour market. But only those who manage the step to excellence will be in lasting demand.
The rest compete with technology.
The real question is therefore not: do we have enough skilled workers?
But: are we still developing people who are significantly better than the average?
If we do not take this question seriously, the excellence shortage will creep into a structural weakness. And this shortage is far harder to remedy than any temporary scarcity of staff.
Closing thought
AI will stay. Automation will increase. Standardisation will become more efficient.
When the average is automated, excellence is the only sustainable differentiation.
More heads will not save us.
Better ones will.
And they do not arise by chance.
Let us work together to ensure that excellence arises and is preserved in your organisation, by developing a future-ready strategy together.
Update of 09 April 2026:
There was a lot of response to my posts, so here I am also publishing the technical article I had written on the subject, which formed the basis of my post.