Competencies are one the most studied and research tools in organization development and design. Yet, there is no reported link to increases in performance based on or due to them. It seems like many organizations put them in place to encourage a missing or desired behavior.
How many times do they follow up or actually measure if the competencies are making an impact?
Could it be that developing and implementing competencies is an example of Organizational Learned Helplessness?
COMPETENCY?
Competence, or competency, is the ability of an individual to do a job properly.
A competency is a set of defined behaviors that provide a structured guide enabling the identification, evaluation and development of the behaviors in individual employees.
In its purest form, “These competencies are always displayed by superior performers.”
For years, possibly decades, organizations have spent hundreds of millions of dollars creating competencies and subsequent training to drive employees to meet or emulate those competencies with little or no real impact to the success or failure of the organization.
After a 13 month development project, one of the credit card companies in the world rolled out new leadership competencies to their service leaders. Twelve months later, there were a series of incidents caused by those service leaders that brought the company to its highest level of customer loss.
Was that all due to competencies?
Of course it wasn’t. However, after millions of dollars spent on their development and roll out, the competencies did little, if anything, to impact the actual performance of the targeted leaders.
There are literally hundreds of examples of competency programs failing to correct lasting cultural issues or performance problems.
Although designed with the best intentions, competency models have a tendency to have inherent flaws that stop them from being as effective as they could be.
COMPETENCIES ARE INHERENTLY SUBJECTIVE
Even with all the hard work that goes into defining each competency, in the end the rating, or a level of competence, for each “attribute” is based on the subjective interpretation of the evaluator regardless of the position.
Because a competency cannot be defined down to the “gnat’s eye lash detail,” it is inherently generic. It cannot cover every aspect or need of a potential role.
This leads to interpretation by the person using the competency.
COMPETENCIES ARE NOT GENERALLY PRACTICAL
Everyone wants to hire and work with top performers. Generally top performers possess the competencies described in most models.
But having these doesn’t mean the person will be successful in doing the actual work required with the resources available, working for the assigned leader and his/her unique style, and working in the company’s unique culture with all of the associated pressures, systems, procedures, and personalities.
COMPETENCY MODELS ARE CONFUSING
Generally, there are too many competencies in most competency models.
Researchers found that there are generally 5 to 7 key “attributes” that can predict future success and a role. However, competency models often have double or triple those numbers of “attributes”.
Discussing and managing that number of “attributes” is nearly impossible.
COMPETENCY TRAINING PROGRAMS ARE A “HODGEPODGE” OF COURSES AND TOOLS
Training associated to each competency, or level within a competency, is a compilation of training courses, webinars, books, and tools that are loosely related to the competency.
The training doesn’t necessarily impact the performance of the individual, and, unfortunately, as with most training there is little follow-up from the manager to determine whether or not the training actually had the intended impact.
What to do?
Although there is no amount of evidence that shows that competency models improve the performance of an organization, they do provide a valuable service. Competencies act to standardize the characteristics of what success might look like in a given role.
That is important when looking to fill a job or to evaluate performances.
On the other hand, there is an easier way to get to the same core group of important skills that is easier and much less expensive.
In a recent blog by Rob Benson:
- Consider bagging the full-blown competency development process; do a simple brainstorming process instead. Brainstorm and list the skill sets that are needed for each job, not the individual competencies.
For most jobs, I guess that you would end up with a fairly short list. In our particular industry, this list might involve presentation skills, coaching skills, sales skills, instructional design skills, planning/organization skills, and one or two others.
- Share that list with everyone whom it applies
- Identify a superior performer for each skill set. Again, this is easier done than most realize. An anonymous, one-question survey, “who has great people skills in this department?” would do the trick.
- In an ideal world, assign the superior performer to the employee seeking development.
Have them mutually agree upon objectives, benchmarks, and time frames. Then, provide that as a less-than-one-page-document to the manager of the employee seeking development.
- Follow up with both. Expect the short report at the agreed-upon date noting key activities undertaken, lessons learned, challenges experienced, and next steps for continued development.
No, it is not as attractive as a 13 month project that captures the attributes or characteristics of the most successful person in a designated role, but it does identify critical skills and leverage the internal experts to mentor others.
This may not be practical for an organization wide approach. But, if there is a need to create competency models for standard roles, consider using an off the shelf tool that has defined competencies and roles already loaded in it. This will shorten the development time, meet over 85% of the need, and it is based on verified research.
After millions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of hours spent on implementing competencies, has there been any real impact in organizational performance? What do you think? Are competencies necessary? If so, why? Are there causal links to organizational performance? Where have you seen competencies be successful? How about unsuccessful?
Image Sources: jan.ocregister.com
