Get popular with leaders
You probably have a lot of friends in your organization. People who respect you and invite you to participate in their programs. The question is not whether you are popular in your department, but rather whether you’re invited to discussions with leadership. Accelerating learning transfer can get you invited to the strategy table. Here’s why.Competency models are the secret sauce for future success
Competency models (also known as capability frameworks) identify what the organization needs people in a particular role to do in order for the organization to succeed and create competitive advantage. That’s important to leadership.The World Economic Forum predicts that employees will need an average of 101 days of reskilling and upskilling in the period leading up to 2022 because the core skills required to perform most jobs will change by 42%. If leaders don’t know that fact, it’s your job to tell them. You need to help them understand the impact of the Fourth Industrial Revolution on their organization. Competency model benefits include the ability to know exactly what core skills are changing so you can upskill and reskill appropriately.
Competency models intrinsically motivate people to achievement through a competency assessment. In essence, each person is presented with a framework of relevant capabilities, they acknowledge where they are and where they need to be, and are presented with a road map for how to be great. That’s important to your target audience who understands that skills are currency.
And that should also be super important to your leaders. If you’re trying to upskill and reskill at the velocity needed for today’s pace of change, you can be sure that if you don’t have competency models that tell you what they are, you’ll never be successful.
Why? Because it’s just not possible to formally train as fast as people need new skills. With the speed of change, skill gaps are growing, while time available for training is practically non-existent. So, if you don’t shift from “training” (push) to “learning” (pull), you won’t make it. And if creating pull is important, you must intrinsically motivate people to learn what’s relevant to them and personalized to their needs.
Competency-based learning enables you to accelerate learning transfer
If the competency models define the required skills and motivate people to do something about them, then you need to make sure you have, or create, competency-based learning such that the required skills can be acquired, and business results follow.Competency-based learning ensures you have no learning opportunity gaps. It provides the greatest opportunity to incorporate the “70” (on-the-job activities, skill practices, job aids, etc.) into the 70-20-10 model (experiential-collaborative-formal).
That’s why performing needs analysis without competency modeling is so flawed. How can you possibly know what your audience needs if you don’t know what skills they should have?
If you’re creating content without capability frameworks, there’s a good chance that:
- You’re wasting a lot of your time and effort
- You’re wasting the time of the people participating in those activities
- You’re not closing skill gaps that are relevant to your target audience
- You’re not moving the needle on changing the behaviors that your target audience needs to do their job in the future
- You’re probably not positively impacting the right results
- You’re contributing to LACK of competitive advantage
- And therefore, leadership won’t invite you to the strategy table because they don’t see the value of your effort
Want to fix that? Want to be invited to leadership discussions because they know you can help them with a strategy to upskill/reskill, close skill gaps and achieve their goals?
Check out the free ATD webinar “How To Leverage Competency-Based Learning To Upskill Employees For Skills Of The Future”, at on April 2, 2020 at 2pm Eastern time. Even if you can’t make it live, you’ll get a link to the recording.
