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Competencies versus Critical Experiences

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We’ve been talking about competencies for a while. Yeah, I know what they are, I know how they get implemented into a talent system, and I even know how they are integrated into critical talent processes. But you know what… I still don’t get it.

We talk about competencies, but when we really get down to the interesting topics in talent management like how our talent interacts with each other to collaborate and innovate, we no longer care about those competencies. We start talking about the experiences they have and the knowledge they can bring to the table. When we staff cross-functional projects, we don’t look at the competencies, we look at valuable experiences.

We talk about competencies, but when we talk about executive development and succession planning, we talk about critical experiences. We look at our possible successor and see if they were deployed in more than two countries as an expat. We look and see if they made the round through finance. Again, we look at the experiences they had, and not the competencies.

We talk about the vision of competencies and how we’ll eventually staff to a specific desired amount of certain competencies in future models of workforce planning, but honestly, we’re already ignoring them before we even get close to that future state.

I know there are a lot of really good talent people out there and perhaps I’m not one of them. Someone tell me if this competency thing is over yet, because you know what, if it’s not over, maybe it should be.

I still don’t get it.

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11 responses to “Competencies versus Critical Experiences”

  1. Bill Kutik Avatar
    Bill Kutik

    I didn’t get it either.

    Until I realized the “placeholders” HR often uses now. “MBA Harvard Business School.” What does that mean you’re good at? Taking tests, sucking up to professors? Certainly, it does mean you know a lot about Finance, since so many courses are required.

    But does it mean you can manage people: down, sideways or up? Probably not.

    Just because someone “made the round through Finance,” doesn’t mean they did well there or really know anything about it.

    While behavioral competencies make me shudder — “works well with others” — many others are valid indicators of what someone is good at.

    And isn’t that what you want to know, too?

  2. Naomi Bloom Avatar
    Naomi Bloom

    If you pull out the term you’re using, competencies, and you put in the term I’ve been using for 22+ years, KSAOCs, your question is answered. KSAOCs are knowledge, skill, ability and other deployment-related characteristics that a human resource may possess and/or that work may require. They include attitudes, behaviors, experiences, you name it. When you build all strategic HRM (aka talent management) processes around KSAOCs, they work as they should. I’ve written a lot over the years about KSAOCs and strategic HRM, but please contact me if you’d like me to send you more details.

  3. systematicHR Avatar

    I agree. We keep changing our minds about what is important to measure employees by. KSA’s (I like the KSAOC btw) do seem to cover off everything pretty well. Competencies are a bit narrow in my opinion, critical experiences as Bill says, may or may not be meaningful. Either way, I’m sick of the constant changing almost as much as I’m sick of competencies. And I’ll announce right now, that I’m sick of whatever is next too. 🙂

  4. systematicHR Avatar

    Oh yeah… Bill… how do you have time to read and comment on this when you have the conference going on???

  5. Bill Kutik Avatar
    Bill Kutik

    “Going on”? The conference doesn’t open until Tuesday night with Naomi’s party, The Brazen Hussies. Hope you’ll be there.

  6. Lexy Martin Avatar

    OK…perhaps I’ve gone too far over to the competency management side at the heart of any good talent management strategy. To me, any organization that takes the time to codify competencies (in a meaningful way such as Naomi’s KSAOCS — need a catchier term) can then match these to performance results to develop talent profiles, then use those to recruit for competencies it needs, develop competencies it needs, as well as pay for them. It can also do workforce planning (long term) for the competencies it will need in the future. But heh…I’m a bit of a data geek and see how organizations use competencies and can do gap analysis on all of the above and actually develop talent profiles. See what Taleo is doing, or Oracle, and likely more.

    But…Wes…to your point, when it comes down to the person decision, it is on critical experiences.

    We’re all right.

  7. […] Competencies versus Critical Experiences Systematic HR Monday, September 28, 2009 We’ve been talking about competencies for a while. We talk about competencies, but when we really get down to the interesting topics in talent management like how our talent interacts with each other to collaborate and innovate, we no longer care about those competencies. When we staff cross-functional projects, we don’t look at the competencies, we look at valuable experiences. Yeah, I know what they are, I know how they get implemented into a talent system, and I even know how they are integrated into critical talent processes. But you know what… I still READ MORE […]

  8. Chris Clarke Avatar

    SSSHHH – don’t mention the “C-word”

    At SHL our stock in trade is the measurement of competency potential using assessments and have found that client communities outside of HR there is often avoidance of the “c-word”!

    This is not to say that the HR community is prone to bad language, but could be because competences are too broad or conceptual to be a useful form of currency within talent management processes. Managers would rather “keep it real” preferring to understand what people actually did during their careers i.e. their behaviours during “valuable experiences”.

    Good competency models are underpinned by straight forward behavioural statements that describe what people do (or don’t do). It is crucial in using competency frameworks to unpack HR issues down to the behavioural level before building back up to broader competences.

    The key challenge of relying on valuable experiences is, using your example; how do we decide whether to send someone out on their first expat’ deployment when they haven’t had that experience before? The answer is, using behavioural assessment to measure an individual’s potential to behave in a way that would make them successful in their possible new role or succession path.

    We would recommend that past, present and potential measures should all be used to make the best decisions. Reliable, and referenced experiences are valuable measures of behaviours that have already been done; performance management and 360 surveys provide a great snap-shot of the current behaviour and behavioural assessment is crucial to predict the potential to succeed in a future role.

    This c- word maybe taboo, but the use of competencies models and particularly their underlying behaviours is definitely not over.

  9. Kris Lundin Avatar
    Kris Lundin

    I think we definitely need a new name for what the data about work performance that is valuable to manage it called. Competencies has a connotation and doesn’t seem to represent the broad application that Naomi suggests (which I strongly agree with btw, but yes we need a catchier name). It is a currency that we should also be helping individuals to understand (it IS of course, their career!) and not just HR folks. It should be so much more than data for your perf mgt system. There are many development activities that occur outside of the employer that builds an employees set of KSAOCs (to borrow Naomi’s term)
    So what should we call them?
    And how do we get them into the hands of the people who ultimately control them (i.e the individual themselves)?

  10. Kent Plunkett Avatar

    It’s not over. It’s just getting going. The problem is in the cost and difficulty of installing and maintaining a competency driven HR approach. Its too expensive and too much work. In addition most companies cut the project short, they do just core competencies or “team” competencies or limit use to higher level executives. Salary.com is committed to solving this problem with a ready to use database of functional competency laden JobModels and a desktop application to manage them. I think the historical problem is that there is an underinvestment in products to solve this problem so far. Too much services. Drop the cost, make it easy and the benefits and ROI will become more visible. If the state of the art stays where it was before this innovation, then competency driven HR would remain aspirational for almost everyone. I’m excited to see the category evolve. By the way, productization will expand the dollars spent on consulting and internal headcount by growing serious adoption. Everybody wins.

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