Competency and Performance Solutions

It is very easy to spend months, or $$$$$ on a competency-based program, and end up with very little to show for it.

Three tips:

Tip One: You are likely to run into a very specific problem, unless you are working with a fully-qualified competency expert. (Look for an international qualification, specifically in competencies, like City and Guilds of London, such as CPS has.)

Here is the problem: as you discuss competencies, you become very familiar with the information. You therefore take the material to higher and higher levels of abstraction. You also start to clump the competencies together, so you end up with about 12 broad abstract statements, covering a whole position. These are no use at all. Continue reading »

Culture (I tell participants) is like an iceberg. You see the part that sticks up about the water, but below the surface is the real bulk. The thing you are most likely to crash into is that unseen, unsuspected mass.

The aquatic metaphor is also apt. We swim in our culture, so like fish we do not notice it. It is the water that surrounds us, and we cease to analyze it. It is simply the environment in which we live.

The other common image of culture is the onion. Our daily lives are framed by layers upon layers of  unseen assumptions and mind-sets. Because we have no other way of conceptualizing our world, we see it through our ‘normal’ perspective, seldom imagining different interpretations, until some rather dramatic event gives us new eyes. Or until we choose to study a subject like Anthropology, to help us see that many things are hiding, in plain sight, right in front of us.
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Once, in a different economic era, The Boss went into his/her office, closed the door, and wrote the company or departmental operational plan (or “business plan” as it was often called).

Today, international studies of managers who develop and implement operational plans show that the following key competencies are required for this process:

Planning                                   Risk management
Delegating                                Networking
Involving others                         Innovating
Consulting                                 Communicating
Influencing and persuading         Monitoring
Evaluating                                 Setting objectives
Building consensus

Continue reading »