A Practical Competency Development Framework
Competency Development is nearly always include at the start of projects, whether they are business or technology based. However this is one aspect that often fades away as the project progresses. This is often due to the culture of the organisation, and the lack of genuine day to day focus on competency development within the day to day operations of the business.
One common cause of this is the lack of competency development framework that can be easily understood AND applied to all roles within their daily tasks and responsibilities. This does not have to be the case. Highly effective frameworks exist and with the right preparation can be integrated in to any project, function or the whole business.
There are 7 elements needed for effective competency development programs:
The framework has to allow individuals, teams and leaders to align their personal skills planning with the needs of the organisation.
The centre, or core, of our framework focuses on DEMONSTRATE - ensuring all team members can understand, wxplain and apply our core values and behaviours as a foundation for a successful cultute.
DRIVE covers the skills need to lead the business/function/team to success
DELIVER covers key areas of business:
- the CUSTOMER understanding/needs/engagement
- the ability to CREATE new value whether products or services
- the PROCESS or workflow that allow us to deliver value
- the skills to ANALYSE and develop insights to drive growth
- the TECHNOLOGY we leverage to deliver
DEVELOP are the skills needed for personal growth that allows each team member to become a more valuable part of our organisation
Role Mapping: The first step in applying the framework is to map our roles. The example below is for the DELIVER section of our framework:
Skills Matrix: After role mapping we can then map the skills to each role and each element of our framework:
Target Matrix: The final step is to map the desired skill level per role per area. Thsi can be used to facilitate self assessment and help team members understand where to focus there development effort:
For the levels (0-6) blooms taxonomy is a good place to start. The key thing is to ensure everyone has a common understanding of levels applied, their meaning and how they can be practically measured or assessed.
