Competency Matrix

(We encourage you to read the articles on life management and competencies at: http://shyam-bhatawdekar.blogspot.com/ and/or http://knol.google.com/k/shyam-bhatawdekar/competency-matrix/6txz9nck6g3/4#

Primary Objectives

Create a culture that inspires and empowers every individual to contribute his best in building business and organization through self development.
Review current work performance and plan for the future improvements.
Provide an opportunity for post-appraisal discussions and guidance to promote self development.
Provide an objective basis to recognize and reward meritorious and outstanding performance.
Provide an objective basis to identify substandard performance and reasons for it.
Meet the need of each person to know how well he is performing.
Support coaching, mentoring, training and development activities.
Support internal mobility like growth paths, transfers, job rotation etc.

Definitions of Some Related Terms That Often Confuse Many

The terms given below are alphabetically arranged.

Ability: An individual's capability either developed or not developed (undiscovered, unrealized and untapped). An accountant may be able to sell but has not done so.

Attitude: An individual's tendency to act in predictable ways. A manager may have humanistic attitude and therefore, he may be compassionate towards people.

Behavior: What an individual performs or does is his behavior and that is observable. It is based on his thinking which is not observable.

Competency: It is the developed ability of an individual. One competency may be a good integration of several allied skills related to the competency. Conducting an effective meeting is a competency that calls for many allied skills like making a meeting agenda, promoting healthy group process, resolving conflicts, managing time etc. Competencies are observable and ratable/measurable.

Knowledge: What an individual knows and comprehends is knowledge. Knowledge may be obtained from formal education, observations, training and experience.

Management: It consists of planning, organizing, staffing, directing (also leading) and controlling.

Potential: It is the predicted future performance of an individual.

Performance: Actual work output/results given by an individual against the expected results or goals/objectives is his performance. It is normally the basis for appraisals and rewards.

Practice: An individual acting as per his or organizational strategies and policies is putting the policies into practice.

Skill: It is the work behavior. In a sense, every verb in a dictionary is a skill. It is micro competency. Allied skills make a competency. In earlier example of conducting meeting, listening is another skill that is essential for conducting effective meetings. Skills are observable and ratable/measurable.

Style: Patterns of behavior is style. A person with humanistic values will have particular sets of behavior towards people and that defines his style.

Traits: They are personal characteristics. For example, an individual can be harsh, arrogant, aggressive or some other person may be polite, just, assertive etc. Many a time, they may not be observable or ratable/measurable.

Why Competencies in an Organization?

In order to carry out an organization's business in a superior manner, it needs to identify the competencies it's managers and all other employees should possess, further improve and practice to improve their job performance towards achieving it's goals.

Competency is Not a Task Statement

Competency is a combination of an underlying capability, a characteristic or an ability with knowledge and skills that results in an effective performance. If competencies are improved, they will give still more effective or superior performance.
Competencies are knowledge and skills statements and not task statements. For example: conducting the meetings is a task. In order to do so, one needs required competency. Therefore, in this case the required competency is the combination of skills to make an agenda, to promote a healthy group process, to resolve conflicts, to manage time etc.

Inventory of Competencies and Developing Competency Matrix

1. An organization should develop an inventory of all the competencies it will need from it's people in order to run it's business as per it's vision, mission, objectives and strategies.

2. These identified competencies then should be classified and grouped together accordingly. The following classifications can be made:

Behavioral or soft competencies.
Managerial competencies
Technical competencies/hard competencies

Some examples of the competencies under these classifications are given later in this write-up.

There could be other alternate ways for classifying competencies as given below:

Competencies for individual excellence or for managing self.
Competencies for interpersonal relations.
Managerial competencies which can be further classified as: 1. Organizational. 2. Role related and 3. People related.
Functional or technical competencies.
Information related competencies.

You may like to refer for a comprehensive inventory of soft competencies: (Soft Skills) http://soft-skills-competencies.blogspot.com/ and/or (Life Skills) http://life-skills-competencies.blogspot.com/

3. Each competency, in turn, will have it's levels of proficiencies. They should be identified.

4. Clear explanations of each level of each competency should be written down. These levels are given different labels by different organizations as per their needs. Some examples are given below:

In one organization, these proficiency levels for each competency are graded as: oh-oh, so-so, good and great.
In other organization, they are termed as: baseline, collaborative productivity, ownership, managing complexity and expert.
In another organization, they simply put them as: level 1, level 2, level 3 and level 4.

5. Also, for each job or each position which competencies of which proficiency level are required should be determined. this is called developing a "competency matrix".

Competency Mapping

Having created competency matrix for every job/position, the job incumbent's current competencies are evaluated against the desired competencies and their level of proficiency. This is mapping the competencies of a job holder against the desired competency matrix for that job. The gaps in desired and actual competencies are identified. This entire process can be done collaboratively by the job holder himself and his superior(s).

Post Competency Matrix/Mapping

Once the gaps in competencies and proficiency levels are known, the gap analysis is carried out. The analysis focuses on the further development of the job holder rather than trying to pin him down for his lacunae in competencies. Therefore, the reasons for the gaps are found out objectively and further course of action to remove these gaps is decided and implemented.

Answers to where to improve and how to improve are worked out:

Competencies the job holder need to improve.
What job holder will do to to improve them?
What the job holder's superior(s), HR department and the organization will do to improve them?

Some Examples of Behavioral and Functional Competencies

As mentioned earlier, we give below some examples:

Some Examples of Behavioral and Managerial Competencies

Individual:
· Self Development
· Self Confidence
· Intellectual Strength
Results:
· Decision Making
· Focus on Results
Team Work:
· Team Building
· Communication Skills
Passion for Products and Technology:
· Passion and Drive for Technology

Some Examples of Functional Competencies

· Ability to set accounting policies
· Ability to perform financial analysis
· Ability to select, evaluate and monitor vendor performance
· Ability to use CAD/CAM tools
· Ability to perform manufacturing capacity planning
· Ability to assimilate new technologies, methods, architectures and techniques related to production
· Ability to use Microsoft Word Software
· Ability to use JIT principles and practices
· Competency in recruiting the people

Overdoing a Competency

While having highest level of proficiency in a competency is always desirable, overdoing it can prove to be counterproductive. Excess of anything is bad. Mastery over skills is OK but obsession with it and therefore, overdoing it can mean difficulties.
Whether it is a hard skill or a soft skill, too much indulgence in it or overdoing that competency can prove to be harmful to self and others, particularly your associates.
An example: An over organized person or a person who is really great in planning things can be a very competent person till he starts overdoing it. The moment he starts overdoing it, he may lose sight of other things. He may become too rigid and structured and less tolerant to continuous and quick changes or unavoidable chaotic situations many times prevalent in real life situations. He may also be pretty divorced with the human element; he may not be comfortable associating with people who are otherwise good and efficient but little less organized in his opinion. With this lopsided weight on planning and organizing he loses his overall balance and becomes overall less competent.

For more examples, refer: (Competencies- Life Management) http://shyam-bhatawdekar.blogspot.com/, (Competency Matrix) http://knol.google.com/k/shyam-bhatawdekar/competency-matrix/6txz9nck6g3/4#

For More Guidance, Assistance, Training and Consultation

Contact: prodcons@prodcons.com

Training on "Competency Matrix/Competency Mapping" is imparted by Prodcons Group's Mr Shyam Bhatawdekar and/or Dr (Mrs) Kalpana Bhatawdekar, the renowned management educationists and consultants and trainers- par excellence with distinction of having trained over 150,000 people from around 250 organizations. Implementation of "Competency Matrix/Competency Mapping" is also facilitated by the team of Prodcons Group.

Also refer: http://prodcons-group.blogspot.com/, http://training-development-function.blogspot.com/, http://productivity-consultants.blogspot.com/

Other Topics of Interest

All Management Topics (General Management, Marketing and Sales, Service, Operations/Manufacturing, Quality, Maintenance, Human Resources, Finance and Accounts, Information Technology, Life Management)

The topics are listed in alphabetic order: