If your organisation still assigns skills top-down by job code, this is the counter-example. Nationwide runs it the other way: 26,000 employees, including Virgin Money, log their own career history, goals, live roles, mentors, learning, and projects into an AI-powered internal talent marketplace, and the system matches them to new opportunities based on what they've actually said about themselves. Mark Jackson isn't here to tell you Nationwide got it right. He's walking through the mechanics so you can work out what would translate to your own organisation: what made a self-reported model stick without a mandate, what the incentive actually had to be, and where a system like this could break somewhere smaller or less resourced. This is the opening keynote setting up the rest of the AI agenda: before AI can help with skills, you need a live, trusted picture of what skills you actually have. Nationwide's approach is the case study, not a blueprint to copy exactly. Key takeaways: - What made a self-reported, incentive-driven skills model stick at Nationwide without a mandate, and what your organisation would need in place to try it. - Why decoupling skills from rigid job codes changed internal mobility at Nationwide, and what that could mean for your own numbers. - What to watch for as AI starts assisting with skills data, and the governance questions worth asking before deploying something similar.