You probably have a lot of friends in your organization—people who respect you and invite you to participate in their programs. But are you invited to discussions with leadership? Accelerating learning transfer can get you invited to the strategy table. Here’s why.

Competency models identify what the organization needs people in a particular role to do in order for the organization to succeed and create a competitive advantage. That’s important to leadership. Competency models intrinsically motivate people to achievement. In essence, they provide each person with a road map for how to be great. Competency models define what is relevant, which is important to your target audience.

If the competency models define the required skills, you need to make sure you have, or create, competency-based learning so that employees can acquire the required skills, and business results follow.

Competency-based learning ensures that you have no learning opportunity gaps. It provides the greatest opportunity to incorporate the 70 (on-the-job activities, skill practices, job aids, and so on) into the 70-20-10 model (see the December 2015 article in TD magazine).

That’s why performing needs analysis without a competency model is flawed. How can you possibly know what your audience needs if you don’t know what skills they should have?