Business

Core Competencies

Working Smarter, Not Harder!

Abdulrahman Al Kindi

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