Right One for the Right Job !!! Simple Story to Illustrate Competencies

Competencies differentiate the average from the superior.  In a key sense they are distinguishing.  Given endless time and endless means everything under the sun can be called a competency but you need to be realistic and  practical.   Read this story that I often used to clarify the concept.

There lived a lumberjack near the bank of the river. The river had thick woods with tall trees on one side and the lumberjack would cut trees (the tall variety) and float them across the river to the other side where it would then be transported for further processing.  

When he cut the trees the lumberjack had to know how tall the tree was before he began to cut it down.  To measure the height he often relied on a squirrel.  Each time he wanted to measure the height of the tree he would tie a string to the tail of the squirrel and up it went to the tree top.   With the length of the string pulled up he estimated the height of the tree.  Every thing was going well and his squirrel had perfected the art of climbing trees and getting the lumberjack the estimate of height.

Soon the lumberjacks demand for trees went up and the squirrel was not able to complete the task for the day.  

A friend gifted the lumberjack a turtle and so he struck up an idea.  He started training the turtle to climb the trees, and the turtle would climb up few feet and slip down and try again and so on till finally it learnt how to climb the tree.    Lo the lumberjack started using both the squirrel and turtle to measure the heights of trees.  He managed his business for a few months like this.  He assessed his squirrel was the ace  performer and the turtle the struggling one. 

One summer the river started drying up and many parts got shallow and logs would get stuck if the river bed was too shallow so now he needed to assess the depth of the water before he could fell the log into the water at any spot.   He now had to chose between the ace and struggling one to measure the depth of water, he remembered the ace performer.... but alas the choice was obvious.

The squirrel could do nothing but stare at the water lest it drowned.   But the turtle went in ... Bingo.... and  came back with the depth being measured by the length of the string it pulled down to the bed of the river.   

Now the lumber jack understood each one's worth.  The squirrel was best when it came to climbing trees,  the turtle was best in the water.    No amount of training would make the squirrel faster at measuring the depth of the water.

So the lesson we learn is that there is a right person for the right job.  This is what competency is all about.  You can spend hours and hours and finally the turtle will be able to accomplish what the squirrel did or vice versa, but the cost and effort of doing it would be different. The question is how do you do it best,  most optimally both effectively as well as efficiently.   That is what we call as distinguishing.

The squirrel's competency is in climbing and the turtles competency is in swimming.  Both can do each others' job but swimming cannot be a competency for the squirrel nor can climbing trees be the competency for a turtle.   

So next time you think of competency remember first principle, get the right person for the job.   That's the starting point.  Competencies are defined in context.... what may be a competency in one context is not so in another.....  There are many other facets of a competency that we'll explore in the months to come.

Differentiate or Depart !!! Matter of Choice

It is not the form that your HR systems and processes take that makes the difference and lets them stand apart rather it is the substance behind the form that does so". 

If the above statement were untrue then every organization would metamorphosize into a similar kind of entity.  Within industries there is so much movement across organizations that people can take with them the knowledge of processes and systems and implement them elsewhere.   

However reality is that there can be only one Amazon.Com or one Apple or one Unilever.   Trying to clone your organizations by merely copying you can succeed only as far as lawns, buildings and security systems installed. 

Beyond that when it comes to your product, service, offerings and other capabilities it is context specific, it is a cultural thing.  Someone just can't photo copy it.  Take all my assets except the employees and you still can't replicate my success.  

So remember you can tell your competitor everything about what your latest Performance Management system has but they still can't really implement what you could.  If that was the case then our human capital systems would be like paint on the wall that you can chose from dozens of  brands and finishes available in the market.

You need to find your own differentiators and build on them.  If your product or service is new you have the first mover advantage however over time you need to have unique differentiators and a configuration of people approaches and attitudes combined with the differentiated services that makes your winning proposition stay unmatched. 

The question then is why so many organizations fail after a while and slip away into oblivion.  It has all got to do with someone else creating additional differentiation.  This can come only when you have innovative ideas and a thrust on adopting new ways and means to differentiate your product or service offering.   That's why they say innovation is the silent weapon you have to succeed in the global battlefield. 

Simple Framework To Understand Competency Utilization

In a earlier post I had spoken about competency utilization.   We looked at what drives competency utilization.  Now here is a framework to understand the concept in more detail. You need to focus on substantive issues that are specific to the organization context and cannot find a generic solution that will work for you.  That is the reason why so many companies that went in search of a solution to their problems by adopting a competency based HR framework did not succeed.  Here is a simple way to view it.

When we hire people with required competencies we are making an assumption that they will deliver superior performance.   This is however independent of the context.   There are three aspects we need to consider.   First we can assume that since you hired a person with the competencies there is one aspect "CAN DO" that is taken care of.  He / She will be able to deliver the capabilities that have been considered in the hiring decision.   

The more important aspect is that if the person "CAN DO"  then is it necessary for him or her to actually deliver. The response to that is decided by two other aspects of competency which are "CHOOSE TO DO" and "ALLOWED TO DO".    

CHOOSE TO DO is all about motivation. A person who can do may chose not to do.  Simple enought.  If that is the case then the quest for superior performance remains so. 

A person CAN DO, may CHOOSE TO DO but is not ALLOWED TO DO.  Barriers in performance, Assigning to the wrong role,  not recognizing and providing the required resources are all reasons for the failure to perform inspite of the capacity and motivation.

So whether a person actually utilizes what he or she was hired for is something which is context specific and needs to be viewed in such a manner.

In hindsight it is all simple but very important to understand and address the same in competency system design.  When I first designed and implemented a competency based HR system including a framework and enterprise wide portal at TCS it was exactly based on the premises above.  This emerged from my research work on competencies.   

There were several dimensions to this issue. To obtain a more detailed view of the framework and understand various dimensions you can register your email ID to receive updates.  All those who register by 30 Jun 2014 will receive a free copy of the detailed write up. Just fill in your email ID in the Get Blog on Email Text Box on the right pane of this page (Below Popular Posts) and Click on Submit.

De-cluttering the Hype Around Job Losses

In my blog post earlier I had written about how the automation tiger is not really as "terrifying" as it seems.   Read it here. Let me continue the argument around this

In recent 30 to 40  years computer controlled equipment has substituted wide range of routine work including jobs of book keeping, booking clerks, telephone operators, librarians and at the same time created jobs needing cognitive skills such as computer programming, software engineering.

Generally technology alters the tasks that people do and as a result there is a shift in demand for skills performed.   When washing machines became popular in India since 1980's the jobs of washer-men was at stake.  But today the difficult job has been sculpted out and numerous laundromats and premium service home delivery laundry services abound.  The washer man's job in the earlier form still exists but the "hardship" factor goes on increasing and the "returns" one can get keep decreasing year on year. So it makes practical and economic sense to shift to something different learn a new skill and expand. 

I met some of the washer folks at DhobiGhat (Near Mahalakshmi Railway Station at Mumbai) and found that they have expanded into dyeing of textiles, subcontracting several hundreds of dyeing jobs every day to make their livelihood easier.  The art of dyeing cloth needed them to re skill themselves and take up the new work.

Thus we see that as technology can shift work from hard work (hand washing by washer-men) to something done much easier through laundromats and large scale automated washers.   This happens due to more and more people willing to pay for more expensive services as society progresses. In short it can happen as the economy grows and people become well off and improved standards of living are evident.

Take another example from IT sector.   
COBOL as a programming language has been around since the time computers evolved (1960's) and the focus was to automate business.  Over the 80's and 90's the shift was towards desktop power and Database (SQL) and Visual Basic became popular,  in the 1990's and 2000's internet became popular and shift was on internet / browser related  technologies and so languages like Java,  ASP.net became more popular... Similarly the years after 2000 saw a thrust on business agility and Service Oriented Architecture started becoming key technologies....Now since last decade we are in the world of mobility and now programming languages like Python, Ruby, Java Scripts are the in thing.  

During each shift that the IT industry experienced new technologies replaced part of the demand for older skills. As the shift occurred people had to re-skill themselves, reorient their thinking.  (E.g. Shift from procedural programming languages like C or FORTRAN to an Object Oriented Programming Language like Java needed not just a new skill to be learnt but rather a completely new way of thinking about programming) to survive in the long run. 

While a new technology continues to expand it does not mean the old simply vanishes overnight.   For e.g. COBOL which is no longer taught in colleges today still dominates the world of business computing as there are many systems which still run on COBOL.  But the growth of demand for such skills is almost down to a trickle and hence only the best will survive in this technical expertise.  This is another reason for those who wish to survive to either be the "Super Guys" or "Super Gals" in their field or shift to something different.

So what this means for those in the corporate world is to understand the evolution of skills in your domain. Look for what is changing, learn and update yourself and continue to stay relevant

I always advise business leaders to ensure that everyone in their teams stays relevant. One of the ways they can do it is to ensure that everyone on their teams has either upgraded at least one level of proficiency on their current skills every 18 to 24 months or added a new skill to their repertoire. Of course 18 to 24 months is more from the tech industry perspective and this time frame varies across industries.

If they haven't either upgraded or moved to a new skill they are likely to face a redundancy sooner or later.   So the bottom line is that "Be Relevant to Just Stay Afloat, After that invest in self progress"


Technology changes should not ruffle us but should propel us to newer pathways.

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

Competencies: What?

What Drives Competency Utilization

Competency:  Sum of Parts

Simple Story to Illustrate Competencies

Competency Bytes !!

Competencies are important and even some say DNA of your organization capabilities.  Much has been said about competencies being relevant to today's business. Most organizations are doing something or thinking about doing something.  Here is my favorite punchline

"You can be certain that If you don't currently take care of your competencies, the day will surely come when your competitors will end up taking care of your current customers"

That was light, quick but serious !!

Read More on Competencies

Competencies: What?

What Drives Competency Utilization

Competency:  Sum of Parts

Simple Story to Illustrate Competencies

The Archers Lesson

A renowned young man who had many feathers in his cap when it came to archery visited  a guru who was renowned for his skill with bows and arrows.  On first attempt the young man hit a distant bulls eye followed by yet another arrow which split the first one.   

"Behold" he said to the guru, "Beat That"

The guru quietly asked the young man to follow him and led him to a mountainous path.   Soon  they reached a deep dangerous chasm with a log placed across the gap.   The guru coolly stepped onto the precariously placed log and picked a distant tree as his target, aimed and fired a shot that hit the middle of the trunk.  The next one went on to split the first arrow.

"Now its your turn" said the guru to the young man.

Leave aside shooting the target the young man could not even stand on the log that was precariously standing across the deep chasm.  His hands and legs were shaky.  He gave up even trying to perch himself on the log, leave alone making his mark.

"You are extremely skilled with the bow" said the guru "but you have little skill with the mind that lets lose the shot"

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Quite a few lessons....   

We often believe that we have mastered the art.  There's always scope for improvement.   At work -  people today have just 2 to 3 years of exposure to a filed of work and claim boredom, claim mastery and a desire to move to the next skill.   They have probably not encountered situations that have to combine skill of mind with the practice.   When it comes to champions it is the mind and attitude that defines success apart from skill.   Every sports coach knows that.    The champions are made of strong minds,  they push them to train on their minds and not just on their game.    

Talent and a discipline mind go together to creating display of excellence.

Short lived is talent of the one whose mind swells with ego.

The champion applies his skill on all kinds of terrain.  Imagine Sachin Tendulkar the cricket guru if he said he could play only on slow pitches or only in high altitude locations.  A true champion is prepared for all conditions. 

Perfect your talent before you try to display it publicly. 

Attitude is the building block for competency.  Consistent application of skill and knowledge with effective outcomes is what competency is all about.   Attitude is essential for effective performance. 

The above are few.... There are many more interesting lessons to be drawn.  

Competency: Sum of Parts ??

You just lost the best person on your team- the champion who had the most admired knowledge, skill and resultant capability to close a deal in one of the complicated lines of business at your organization.   So what way did that impact your competency as an organization.  Does individual competency affect the overall organizational competency.   Does one person carrying away vital capability make any difference to your organization.   

We often hear -  organization is bigger than individuals.  Yes that's true and it is also true that the whole is greater than the sum of parts when it comes to the organization and its employees capabilities.   However the caution for leaders is to understand that even when you deduct something  the same logic holds true.   When a specific capability (embodied in the individual) leaves the decrease is also greater than just one persons capability going away.  You can't have a one sided equation can you?

Here are three aspects that can clarify.

a) An exit of any nature is like something which rocks the boat.  Thought processes are triggered in  mind of colleagues and coworkers as to what made him / her leave,  should they follow and look for a better paying job... if he / she could get 30% more can't I get 40% more. This puts some pressure in the system that has a push effect.  There is a drag on the agility vis a vis that cumulative capability that the individual contributed to.

b) There is bound to be some kind of imbalance in the target goal or objective at hand.   It is like a relay - one person less to handle the baton - maybe you can replace the individual quickly , even before he's actually left , but what about the hours and hours of practice that went in before the final race.   This applies even to work situations.   So it has a slow down kind of impact or at least a temporary one till the capability evens out.

c) Replacement cost, effort and time to speed for building the same capability means someone has to take time out to train or coach another person.  Someone has a temporary diversion of focus towards something other than the goal at hand.  Reduced focus means reduced capability.  Can it be simpler.  

In future posts we'll explore more of the fascinating aspects of competency both individual as well as organizational level.   Other posts related to competency

Competencies: What?

What Capabilities? Change Management

Learning from Stories : Power of Patience, Experience

Most readers would have heard this story which is a popular zen story on the internet. The story goes thus...

A Martial Arts Student went to his teacher and said earnestly, "I am devoted to studying your martial system. How long will it ake me to master it". The teachers reply was casual, "Ten Years".. Impatiently the student answered, "But I want to master it faster than that. I will work hard, very hard,  I will practice every day, ten or more hours a day if I have to do it. How long will it take then?" 

The teacher thought for a moment and said... "20 Years"

The teacher was emphasizing the virtue and value of being patient.  You really need some time to master a given task, job or capability.  For those who learnt car driving .....Imagine putting 12 hours of lessons in one day to learn to drive. It never happens that way.  The reason is that our brain takes time to go through the experience and slot the same into relevant repositories.  So although 20 years might seem exaggerated it is the message about being patient in accomplishment.   Some may do it faster and some slower but one needs to pace it as per his or her capabilities.  

When you try to deliver too much too soon there are bound to be mistakes, slip ups, and costly consequences but there could always be exceptions.  Either the work would get compromised or the individual would get burnt out.   Think of dieting all at once in a week rather than six months to shed a few kilos.  Consequences would be anyone's guess.

Many things that we do in life go un-enjoyed and un-cherished because we rush through it and don't really soak into the process of doing so.  Remember the last walk you had to a store or a friends place.... Did you take time to enjoy the nature, beauty of things on the way, the birds, the trees, the clouds or the starry night.    All that was probably at the back of your mind and out of focus.  (Read my blog on Focus bringing attention)

We will enjoy things more if we LIVE through the experience and savor it rather than trying to rush.  

However the message should not be confused with complacency or delayed fulfillment. It is about setting a right pace and optimal time for things.  

Considering A New Career Tool? Three Key Elements

Many times we come across organizations interested in designing career management or career progression framework, tool or system.   From my experience there are three factors that are a MUST CONSIDER for success of any such systems.  In no order of importance they are.   

a) What the individual wants (Aspiration)

b) What the individual brings to the table (Capability or Competency)

c) What the organization needs (Need)

If you have an imbalance or misalignment between these three you are bound to fail. 

For simplicity call them ACN.

The three need to be in alignment for any kind of successful program you want to drive.  If you have identified A and C but there is no N then for the organization there is no meaning to invest in the same.

Similarly if individual wants A and there is N but no C then it is a decision about whether to Train and Build and at what Cost.

Organization may have the N and individual the C but the individual has a different A then you run the risk of losing the employee so look for other individuals with the same A.

Quite Simple in Hindsight Isn't It.  

What Capabilities? Change Management

Change is here to stay.  Managing change follows logically.  It is no longer a rare event occurring that needs to be managed rather it qualifies as a function by itself.   No wonder over 50% of companies today have some kind of change management functions. 

They say change is constant which can only mean that it is constantly present.  In relative terms change is variable. The pace of it is getting faster and faster.  For e.g. each year technology is making us adopt new ways, give up the old.   Business models are getting disrupted with new inventions.  Organizations are reinventing themselves.   To do this we need people who can manage the change agenda.  What are the top three competencies that change management folks require.   Read on....

Consider this....We communicated so hard,  we sent mailers, we sent reminders,  we put up posters and we did road shows for our diversity program but there has been very lukewarm response from the managers?  

Managing the communication effectively is a key capability in change management.   Understanding which sources resistance can come from and who are the opponents who are the fence sitters and who are the "friends" of change is important.   Change champions should be from bucket 3 and should attempt to put in more than just an effort to convert the fence sitters to rally behind the change.

Sample yet another familiar situation...By the time we went to the teams with news about the policy changes there was a lukewarm response as they already seemed to know through the news papers and grape vine.

Keeping employees informed as and when change is effected is very important element of building trust.  Openness,  honesty and  transparency are elements that reinforce trust building. The noted management guru Chris Argyris had emphasized the role of trust in high levels of performance of employees.  So building trust is the second capability required by the members of the change management function.  Trust is broken when they fail to keep stakeholders in the loop, when false promises are made verbally and refusal to put them in writing, when misguided decisions are upheld and when changes anticipated are not communicated.   

Nurturing collaboration is the third capability dimension that is important.  Today almost all change programs involve inter disciplinary efforts and team work.  In such situation a collaborative environment is essential for success.   Collaboration fosters successful team outcomes and rates high among the team building success factors.   

So when you consider the change management function do look at how you can build up a team who can operationalize these three capabilities viz; creating an environment of collaboration,  building trust in the change process and finally communicating effectively, unambiguously and with the right intent.   Remember Intent Content Gap blog post posted earlier.

Competencies: What?

Organizations are spending top dollars each year to develop and adopt competency models.  The end objective?  Improve organization and individual performance or rather develop organizational capability to perform through the capability of individuals.   

But that is the tricky part.   Let me try through this example :   What is Nike's Competency? Is it in manufacturing shoes ?   Surely Not.   Their competency is not in making of shoes per se rather it lies in effectively managing their supply chain,  managing the outsourcing relationship with vendors who make the  shoes,  creating and managing the  designs and so on that make it a successful company.  Read what Nike has said on its site.   There are over a million contract workers in the supply chain of Nike that are involved in the manufacture of shoes designed and made to specification.  

It’s not just about getting better at what we do – addressing impacts throughout our supply chain – it’s about striving for the best, creating value for the business and innovating for a better world.

So for organizations like Nike it is all about their ability to manage all aspects of the supply chain, the branding and marketing. These bundles of capabilities which we Nike has in managing the supply chain is the core competency, the one factor that gives it a sustained competitive edge.... the ability to earn sustained returns both top line growth and bottom line performance. 

The bundling of capabilities comes through building competencies in the people that deliver.  The designers have the capabilities (now we say residing in the people) which are individual competencies.   The marketing folks or product managers who manage the account and lines of products (running, sneakers, sports, running,  football etc) have competencies in brand management, or portfolio management.   These are all at the individual employee level but together these capabilities accrue to build and create the organizations core competencies. 

This can be a simple way to understand.  There are organizational competencies, there are individual competencies.   One needs to understand both to build a winning formula.   Just focusing on individual level can lead to myopia or de-focus on the organizational core competency.    Am I right, core competency helps you bring focus? at the organizational level. 

The next issue for us to understand is how do you measure competencies. 

What Drives Competency Utilization

We've all heard of competencies I'm sure. The very things (characteristics, traits, dispositions) that differentiate the outstanding one's from the ordinary.  In a sense it is like asking "What Makes Schumacher what he is".   Is it something that anyone can get, acquire or learn and become.  Yes!!! That is why the whole competency movement came about.   Primarily it is the outcome of works of  Richard Boyatzis,  David McClelland and others who pioneered the concept.

Now organizations you have seen and heard about spend several millions of Dollars each year on competency based processes, systems and frameworks.  They are investing significant  time and managerial effort to work out the competency definitions, models and so on.  So the question that one should ask is what really determines the utilization of the competencies that employees have.  How else would you be able to drive the utilization and the resultant benefit derived from the  competencies that your employees have.  Wouldn't you want your employees competencies to be used to improve, to do new things for your organization, ... in short to be better, faster, more innovative.  Yes Of Course.... Then the question is how do you drive up competency utilization.   

Is the utilization of competencies something that happens by itself just because you hired the person with level 4 on a given competencies.   Is the person going to shun using his competencies for some reason.  Such questions would surely come to your mind. 

In a series of posts I will try to answer such questions and provide some insights based on my research done over a period of time.   But before that think about how does one define a competency.  More on this in later post.