Wednesday, February 4, 2015

Competency Concepts Primer

In this post I will elaborate one some relevant characteristics of competencies.   Competencies are one of most effective ways to channelize capabilities for advantage but many times misunderstood therefore large number of implementations (over 60%) don’t benefit the organizations where the models are implemented.

In an earlier post I tried to clarify about competencies being something that differentiates people on their abilities. Competencies are defined in context, which implies that what may be competency in one context may not be so in another one.   So Point one about competency is “context”

Second, if we a person has a competency the application has to be consistent in order for it to be competency. Taking an example close to the Indian context if you consider batting as a competency for Sachin Tendulkar then he should be able to bat well consistently across various types of pitches viz., bouncy, sow, fast and similarly be consistent when playing spinners or medium pacers, googly specialists and so on. 

Third, competencies can be developed.  In that sense it is a coachable construct. .  However what comes to mind here is about “Application”. One needs to understand the behavioural anchors well to get a clear map as to how to develop and build proficiency on the competency.  Most organizations define competencies in behavioural terms.  The behaviours are organized in order of increasing proficiency either using an appropriate point scale (ranging from 3 to 5 levels) or a nominal scale (High, Medium, Low and so on)

Further competencies encompass behavioural descriptions that can relate to knowledge, skills or attributes and a combination of these. They can be threshold or differentiating. Every job role will have both threshold as well as differentiating competencies.   

Above are a few aspects of competencies to bring some clarity on the concept that is very relevant for organizations performance.

More elaborations on competencies and its application in organizations in later posts.

Click below for other links on Competencies


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