Sims Learning Connections

Reference: Corporate Learning Trends & Innovation (CLTI2007)

Prior to the conference, Donald provided some valuable context for his CLTI presentation at his blog:

There’s great opportunity right now for L&D to use the current interest in Human Capital and Capability Management to improve what it does, and to play a strategic role in the organisation. After all, the L&D department is the place which has – or should have – the closest relationship with employees and their competencies.

and

L&D could allow itself to be so bogged down in the minutiae of delivery, and so excited by the delivery possibilities of the plethora of new technologies that it misses this opportunity. Someone else will end up doing it – possibly someone from operations, and they will probably have to learn a lot of things about competency and knowledge from scratch in so doing.

He also covered these points in his presentation closing.

This takes me back to my L&D – KM convergence series and the historical roots that knowledge management has in ‘human capital’ and ‘intangibles’ — as represented by the work of Karl-Erik Sveiby, who Donald referenced. In some organizations the “KM folks” if they remember their roots are in a position to contribute positively to this conversation. Also connect this convergence thought to the later CLTI presentation by David Wilson who drilled-down on the unfortunate frequent organizational division amongst what he calls the Performance – Capability – Learning triad.

I had not realized the extent of the competency framework penetration (at least in the UK?) The quoted CIPD survey data: 60% of organizations are currently using a competency framework, with 48% of the remaining planning to introduce one.

I like Donald’s flip-chart approach to having a conversation that gets to the bottom of problems and diagnoses if people really need training to address the problem…use a flip-chart divided into four quadrants: Knowledge, Skills, Motivation, and Environment. Place “Post-It” notes with written descriptions of the presenting symptoms in the appropriate quadrant.

Summarizing my one first-hand data-point in this space from former employer: we did have a closed-loop between the annual review component of performance management, the competency framework via instantiation in the review software, and Learning via employee development plans. All working reasonably well the last I heard; however, the transition for the organization was a long cycle as employees and managers had to get their heads around the distinction between reviews for results (goals and objectives) and reviews for competency.

A risk, as I believe Donald mentioned, is that with the attempt to be comprehensive and specific, the framework grows within a company to such a size and sophistication that it then collapses under its own weight to become shelf-ware. Early on, in my prior employment, we had a tendency to proliferate ‘functional competencies’ (those specific to a finite number of roles, contrast to ‘core competencies’ applicable to all) for too many subtle and fine-grained competency variations. Later a stronger gate-keeping was put in place for both the competency framework itself (as a high-hurdle for adding a new competency, along with a push to merge earlier distinct competencies), and in performance management for the number of total competencies any one employee would be reviewed on.

I did appreciate the competency framework as both an employee and manager as it provided useful guidance and some degree of objectivity to what a particular corporate-level (e.g. Associate) should demonstrate. This helped in looking at not only what was achieved (the results part of an employee’s review, separate from competency framework), but also how achieved, which is one way to support a desired company culture.

Bottom-line: In my one data-point experience, as long as the bureaucracy is held in check, the ongoing cost-benefit for a competency framework component in an overall performance management system is reasonable — at least for moderate and (extrapolating) larger companies. However, the initial design and human side of the implementation can tough, even when using third-party content as a starting point for design.

For further reading:

• Karl-Erik Sveiby articles and papers
• Inside Knowledge article – the history of knowledge management as of 2002 through the eyes of Karl-Erik Sveiby
• Favorites from the presentation’s Resources slide:
  • 7-Stage Skills Management Methodology White Paper – Donald H Taylor, Infobasis, 8-page PDF
  • The HRM-Performance Link: Why, How and When does People Management Impact on Organisational Performance? – John Purcell, the AMO model, 24-page PDF
  • Competency and Competency Frameworks – CIPD, includes many additional resources
• Donald’s annotated blogroll
• Two interesting blog posts from my feed reader search query = ‘competency’:
  • Connecting Employee Performance and Enterprise Performance, Systematic HR. Be sure to read the comments on this post + other relevant content at this blog.
  • Putting a training peg into an education hole, Harold Jarche