Business
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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 doesnt 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 youve 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. Its 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 youve finished your “wish list,” youll need to compare it to reality.
Measuring What You Have
We cant 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 youve 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, youre gambling here that they might take these skills elsewhere, but any time you employ people you should hope theyre 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, youre leveraging someone elses 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 youve assessed the competencies of your current staff and compared them to the “wish