In the interest of truth in advertising, I have to preface any conversation about competencies by acknowledging that I worked at the Hay Group some years ago. It was over ten years ago now, but my short time there had a profound influence on my views about competencies.
Are Competencies a Failed Talent Development Tool?
While working with Hay, I saw carefully crafted competency models shape organizations’entire language for leadership. Well done competency models can crystallize the core distinguishing elements of leadership for an organization and enable the learning organization to bring laser-focus to its development effort.
I believe that competency models are doomed to failure if one starts the model development effort believing that the relevant competencies are already defined, and must only be “matched” to the particulars of the organization. Sure, some leadership characteristics look similar across organizations. But those characteristics are usually not the ones that offer the potential to provide the enterprise with a meaningful competitive advantage. It is those other leadership behaviors, highly specific to the organizational context, and that have not yet been uncovered, that offer great promise to help organizations to take themselves to a higher level.
Unfortunately, it is a pretty major effort to develop competency models in a manner that measures up to a high standard. I learned the approach at Hay over ten years ago and have developed quite a few on my own since then. Model development has to be approached as part ressearch project, and part organizational intervention. It is not something that can be done in afternoon, with a few people in a room and deck of playing cards. Really impactful models require significant individual and organizational energy.
The posts in this section represents a sampling of my thoughts about some of the competencies I have developed over the years.
Filed under: Leadership Competencies
It is so nice to know someone that holds the same perspective. I am so strugling now on how our HR define the competency model. It is totally a nonsense and ineffectiveness work! I have similar experience as you had working in a consluting company and getting to know their methodology in defining core competency model for the clients. It is efficient but not effective at all! With the eagerness to do something that actually works, I went back to school and got my graduate education in UMN. And in graduation, I chose a corpirate environment with the hope to do something different. However… I understand why many consulting companies can boom by providing useless solution. There is a huge demanding there in the market!
With your experience, Mark, could you please help me understnad why people tend to choose something do not work? lazyness, lack of patience, or something else? Thanks!
Xunhua,
Thanks for your comment and question. Competency modeling is something of an art form, and one is always making a trade-off between getting a good model and managing the investment of resources (money, time, etc.) . The trick is to match the approach to creating a competency model with the demands of the situation. When you are creating competencies for a key role with lots at stake (perhaps there are a large number of incumbents in the role, or it is strategically critical), then it is imperative that you get the competencies right. Similarly, if you are trying to create a competency-based foundation for HR practices, and will be building pieces of your HR infrastructure around the competencies (e.g., performance management process, recruiting and hiring system, development processes, etc.) then it is inmportant to get them right.
I hope this additional perspective is helpful.