What is Competency?
Competency for your business and personnel is the ability to execute the principles, skills, behaviours, processes and
techniques needed to perform a given task, set of tasks, or procedure to achieve a desired result.
How can you measure Competency?
How quickly the job gets done ... not necessarily:
Although a good measurement for choosing Formula One pit crews and drivers, it
isn't such a good criteria for picking your finishing cabinetmaker, or trusting your airline pilot's work in completing
a pre-flight check.
Total Quality, doing the job perfectly, Zero Defect ... not necessarily:
These mean NO mistakes and NO surprises, and that is simply not a realistic expectation in ANY field of human endeavor.
It may not even be the most desirable and effective goal, since most great discoveries were the result of a series of
failures, and many were even the result of profound mistakes.
Qualifications or Education ... not necessarily:
Some of the poorest performances in business have been turned in by the most credentialed individuals. Certifications
and diplomas are important prequalifications in many roles, but they do not translate easily into a measurement of on-the-job
skills and capabilities.
Experience or Expertise ... not necessarily:
Even though there is some truth to the adage, "Age, wisdom and guile will defeat youth, enthusiasm and naivete", Experience
often results in limiting new ideas and approaches, and Expertise is the usual suspect when overconfidence results in
accidents and failures.
Are there different levels
of Competency?
Of course, competency can be a very complicated term. For example, being told simply
that you are 'competent' is rarely considered complimentary, even though it is much better than being told that you are not.
In most business contexts, the levels of competency will run from novice to expert and the challenge is how to
move competency up that scale.