Earlier I spoke about "Competency Utilization" Read the Post Here. Now Utilization is like the post script. Competency comes before that.
To cover a bit of further ground on the topic let us try to understand what is a competency itself. When it comes to competency let us restrict our understanding to "people competency". For us competency is something that makes person X stand out on his / her performance outcomes. That is to say in a sense that.... delivering high or superior performance is an outcome and something that precedes it (which is capability residing in a person) is a "competency" It is the preceding aspect of performance. (High Performance)
So in that sense every thing you have as a skill, knowledge etc is all competency? No.
So in that sense every thing you have as a skill, knowledge etc is all competency? No.
Now how do you differentiate?
It is something that is present (to some reasonable extent, lets now worry how much or to what degree) or resides in the one displaying high performance but is manifest either very low or is absent in the average or folks who are low on performance outcomes.
So look for "Something distinguishing" found in those that deliver high performance and which is present as a precedent to the performance.
Now does it mean that there can be only one characteristics that can drive one kind of performance outcome. No in fact it is a many to many type of relationship. One outcome can be driven by more than one competency and One competency can drive more than one kind of outcome.
Now that's getting confusing.... Yes !!! That's why we need to understand in steps. Here is an example.
Verbal Communication can be a competency that drives both "successful settlement of a collective bargaining process" as a performance outcome as well as "appeasing a unruly crowd" or "pacifying a set of disgruntled employees" as an outcome.
At the same time "successful settlement of a collective..." would need "Business Acumen" in the context of the business you are negotiating the settlement of the collective bargaining objective.
Now comes the degree of presence or absence of the competency... That's something we'll understand as proficiency. So the question to reflect on are...
a) Is competency binary? Is there a 1-0 kind of relationship that if it is present then outcome is delivered? Else No?
b) If it is not 1-0 then how does the grading or proficiency depth get applied in organizations?
These are somethings we'll see later. Till then here's a quote for you to reflect on this quote that emphasizes the importance of competencies in business.
"If you don't take care of your Current Competencies, a day will soon come when your Competitors will be taking care of your Current Customers."
Other Competency Links
Competency : Sum of Parts
Competencies !! What?
What Drives Competency Utilization?
