The Opportunity
You have a good product, a good market share, good distribution. How do you “raise the bar” and become truly great?
The Solution
In most cases, greatness doesn’t come from doing the same things but trying harder. When you do that, even the combined efforts of all of your people are too diffuse to make much of a difference. Like having hundreds of people pushing with their hands on a brick wall, you spend a lot of energy getting nowhere.
Greatness comes from focus. Having the effort of those hundreds of people translate into a single point of impact, like a single sledgehammer, will definitely have more impact.
Core competencies are “focus points” that funnel peoples’ skills and efforts to make a greater effect.
Successful companies often have one main core competency, or a closely related cluster of core competencies that support each other.
What Are Core Competencies?
Core competencies are the key skills, characteristics and assets that your company brings to the marketplace. These competencies, on an organizational level, are a synergistic blending of the core competencies that your people individually bring to work every day.
What does your company do? If you have to think about that more than a second or two, it may be too complicated.
Example company core competencies:
- Excellent Customer Service
- (State, Nation, Worldwide) Information Networking
- New Product Research and Development
- Market Research
- Relationship Development/Outreach
These are obviously very broad competencies that would work for nearly any company. Yours are probably much more specific.
Defining What You Need
After you’ve determined your unique market niche and the core compentencies your company brings to the marketplace, analyze the skills that you need your workforce to bring to the table. It’s important that you do this objectively, so try not to think about what you have, but instead about what you need if you had the ideal workforce and time and money were no object. (There will be time enough for reality later!)
“People” competencies that would support the above:
- Customer Service
- Information Technology/Knowledge Management
- Scientific/Creative skills
- Marketing Skills
- Sales Skills
Once you’ve finished your “wish list,” you’ll need to compare it to reality.
Measuring What You Have
We can’t emphasize enough that evaluating employees must be done in a way that is objective and respectful to your employees. Solicit their help, if you can, in determining the best way to evaluate their skill levels on the core competencies you’ve identified. Make sure you make this a positive experience. Let them see what they have to gain by making unknown skills known, obtaining certifications or taking industry-standard tests that will make THEM more valuable to the marketplace (yes, you’re gambling here that they might take these skills elsewhere, but any time you employ people you should hope they’re working for you because they want to, not because of lack of other opportunities.)
- Skills Surveys/Skills Databases
- Performance evaluations
- Certifications
- Tests
- Assessments
Use certifications, tests, and assessments that are standard to your industry wherever possible. That way, you’re leveraging someone else’s research (rather than devoting time to building your own programs) and ensures that your employees have an incentive to participate because it gives them something of value.
Filling Gaps
Once you’ve assessed the competencies of your current staff and compared them to the “wish list” you made in the previous section, you are likely to have some gaps and overlaps. The overlaps may present some opportunities that you haven’t thought of before. Using some creativity, you may find ways of enhancing your product, service, or processes to leverage these windfalls.
Filling the gaps you’ve identified also needs to be done with great tact and respect for your people. Investing in something that helps them contribute more to the company has an inherent value. You will also want to focus on the positive aspects of greater opportunity as the company expands, enhancing their chances for raises, promotions, and bonuses as they help the company succeed.
Opportunities for Developing Current People
- Off-Site Programs
- On-Site Consultants/Workshops
- On-line or CBT training
- Internal Training/Information Sharing
You may find gaps that no one on your current staff has the time or interest to develop.
Recruiting New People
Advertise for specific skills. Rather than advertising for a role (“project manager” or “accounting specialist”, for example,) make sure that all of your advertisements also include expectations of core competencies you require in your organization. Even an accountant or programmer must have excellent communication skills if that is what your company values.
Recruit from learning institutions that teach what you need. Their placement centers are always happy to talk to people who value skills that the institution is known for, and are happy to help place their graduates in an environment where those skills will be utilized and appreciated.
Engaging the Focus
Having people with these skills does absolutely no good unless those skills are engaged for the benefit of the company. It’s a traditional complaint that companies bring in outside consultants to do a lot of things that their own people could have told them much less expensively.
Andrew Carnegie commented that most of us take the public school and library system for granted, simply because they are free. We tend to value most the things that we have struggled to acquire and pay for. But some of the best ideas come free. Don’t ignore this windfall!
Communicate regularly with your empoyees, and emphasize the point that you are open to ideas and recommendations. Make sure you give credit where credit is due. You might ask people directly if they’ve had opportunities to use all of their skills.
Staying ahead of the changing economy is getting more and more difficult to do by working harder. Adapting to changes and working smarter requires specific focus. Focusing on the core competencies of your company is the means to develop that focus. More specifically, you need to determine what core competencies are needed to meet your companies specific goals and objectives. Once this “wish list” of core competencies is developed, you need to identify gaps and overlaps, and resolve the gaps by developing or augmenting your current staff. Continued effort is needed to make sure those competencies and skills are being leveraged by everyone in your company.
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