Competencies - Intro
Strategy failure or Strategy success
Formulating a comprehensive business strategy, getting the work done and achieving success are three goals for most companies. To achieve the desired outcomes, all elements must work together like a finely tuned machine. All of the stakeholders, "gears of the machine" must have a common understanding of the strategy and the ultimate desired outcome. There must be collaboration, communication, learning, course correcting and continuous measurement along the way.
All that sounds great, but it rarely happens.
What goes wrong with most business strategies can lie in any part of the business.
- Economic factors may play a significant roll in the ultimate success of the strategy. The world has become flat. The "world" is now the business stage and global influences affect almost every outcome.
- The competitive position of the company may influence the outcome. Companies who hold the number one market share in their category are increasingly under attack from below. Staying on top is very hard work. Trying to attack the number one position is fun.
- A competitor's reaction to your strategy may influence the outcome. Given that your competition knows a lot about you, they will understand your strengths and your weaknesses and will quickly take away your advantage.
- There may be internal issues that need to be solved before the strategy can be implemented. For example, IT systems that are needed to support the project may be complex and expensive. Sequencing and timing may play a significant roll in the outcome.
- There may be a lack of funding to support the strategy. Too many ideas and the desire to do them all can cause an under-allocation of needed capital and expense budgets.
- There may be a shortage of human capital resources that can be dedicated to the project. Without a clear job definition of job responsibilities and the amount of people that will be required for each phase can cause delays in project timelines.
- Current processes and Standard Operating Procedures may not support the new work. Without clarity around how the work gets done and who will do the work, the strategy will fail.
- Leadership may not be committed and totally support the project. This is a major issue with most strategic failures. If leadership does not stay involved and intimate with progress and issues, the strategy is doomed.
- Employees may not be properly trained. Training takes time and costs money. If the strategy is built around doing something differently, employees need to learn and become proficient so that the outcome can be realized.
- Behavioral competencies may not be clearly understood for each position. What does "effective behavior" look like? What does "bad behavior" look
like? What would "world class" behavior look like?
- Change is hard. Change is emotional. Lack of truly understanding change management will limit the success of all strategy work. Does leadership understand? Does leadership believe? Does leadership do?
Identifying what can go wrong is easy. Developing plans to assure strategy success is more difficult.
There is continuing debate on how to maximize employee performance. Marcus Buckingham and Donald Clifton in their book, NOW, DISCOVER YOUR STRENGTHS, The Free Press, 2001, build a strong case that a strength based approach versus behavioral competencies is a better way to improve the productivity of an employee and overall employee satisfaction. I agree that identification of a person's talents and then building them into strengths is very important, however, unless you can understand what competencies a job requires and how an employee behaves, you do not get the complete picture.
Methodology
Interviews were conducted with retail employees to clearly understand what competencies are most important to success for the employee and for the company.
To understand what behaviors were critical to success, the research focused on store level positions of Supervisor, Assistant Manager and General Manager, District Manager and Regional manager levels. The goal was to determine what effective leaders do to maximize performance, the employee experience, the customer experience and profitable outcomes? There were also examples of ineffective behavior and also world class behavior.
Competencies that matter most:
Problem Solving
Problem Analysis (examples provided in Interpretive Guide)
Decision Making
Planning and Prioritizing
Long Range thinking
Emotion and Motivation
Integrity and Composure
Personal Drive and Energy
Desire to Learn
Cultural Commitment
Interpersonal Skills and Communication
Customer Focus
Building positive relationships
Persuasion and Influence
Communication
Work and Leadership
Empowerment and Involvement
Developing Others
Multi-team and Group Leadership
Insight into Self and Others
Insight into self and others
Organizational Understanding
Special Knowledge or Skill
Retail Management Experience
General Business Management Experience and Planning
Financial / Operational Analysis and Interpretation
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