Competency Models Made Easy - Two Simple Spreadsheets to Build Your Own Competency Models

Steven Forth is co-founder and managing partner at Ibbaka. See his skill profile here.

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Competency models are attracting a lot of attention lately. A good competency model provides a lens to see if the skills of your workforce align with your current and future needs. Combined with skill profiles, they enable the transformation of work.

Many organizations begin by building or prototyping competency models in spreadsheets. This can be a good idea, especially when you are not ready to commit to a skill and competency management platform. To do this effectively, it helps to have a starting point. This is what Ibbaka is offering here.

Download a spreadsheet you can use to build your competency model

We are offering a template, in an Excel spreadsheet, that you can use to better understand skill and competency models, how to build them and we provide a tool that you can use to build your own. In fact we are offering two versions of the template: a simple version and a full version. Both versions are provided under a Creative Common Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) license. This lets you make changes to the template as long as you offer to share them with others on a non commercial basis. This does not mean you need to share competency models you build in the template. That content is yours. It refers only to the template itself.

The Simple Competency Model Template

Here we keep the competency model to just three components: Skills, Learning Resources and some higher level organizing component. The component you choose will depend on the intended use.

For example, if you want to introduce a new capability into your organization, you might choose Roles as the top level. Roles can be added to Jobs or Project Roles or can even be Ad-Hoc Roles that people pick up ‘off the side of their desk’ so to speak. Organizing new capabilities as a set of roles makes it easy to slot into existing job architectures.

Suppose you want to apply a general approach widely across your organization. Perhaps there are new behaviors that you want people to adopt. Most behaviors require some skills to perform, so you still need the skills. Because you want to help people with these skills, you attach learning resources.

To make this concrete, we provide two examples.

• A Simple Competency Model for Technical Sales (Role Based)

• A Simple Competency Model for Cybersecurity (Behavior Based)

Get the simple template here.

The Full Competency Model Template

Sometimes you need more than a simple model. A full competency model can have many different components combined in different ways. This level of sophistication is needed for large organizations or complex disciplines. There is no single framework or architecture that will suit all needs.

This is where competency model experts shine. This is a rapidly growing discipline. These are the people who design and guide the implementation and evolution of competency models. They are creators, change agents and stewards of the future.

Ibbaka Talent includes a Competency Modeling environment, but not everyone can or wants to adopt a new system. So we took some of our best ideas, boiled down our experience and put it into a template.

There are a lot more decisions to be made in a full competency model and we provide guidance on how to make these decisions. The example we provide here is the Open Competency Model for Customer Success. This model is also offered under a Creative Commons license. Learn more about our Open Competency Model work here.

Get the full template here.

Upload Your Work to the Ibbaka Talent Platform

Simple competency models and full competency models can both be uploaded to the Ibbaka Talent Platform. This let’s you work offline in a spreadsheet, build and test models, and then only commit to a system when you are ready.

Why would you want to upload a model to s skill and competency management system?

• So that people can connect the model to their skill profile and see how the new capability or behavior fits into the skills they already have.

• To connect the model to other systems, competency models are used to organize learning and development, to enrich the job architectures on HR systems and to inform applicant tracking systems.

• To make it easier to manage and evolve a model and to connect it with other models. Managing one simple model on a spreadsheet can be a lot of work, and managing and maintaining is generally not as much fun as designing one. When you have multiple linked models, well, a spreadsheet is not really a practical option.

Job Architecture and Competency Model Planning Choices

Perhaps you are even early in your process and are not sure if you need a skill and competency model and are unsure as to how you will roll it out. We have something for you too.The Job Architecture and Competency Model Design Decision Guide. This simple Powerpoint Guide helps you make the critical choices you need in order to move forward, or to hit the pause button.

Download this guide here.

If you are more concerned with the big picture, next week we will be offering a template for applying Roger Martin’s strategic choice cascade for talent. Let is know at info@ibbaka.com if you would like to be notified when this tool becomes available.

Ibbaka Posts on Competency Models and Competency Frameworks

• Competency models as learning plans

• From user experience to competency model design - Margherita Bacigalupo and EntreComp

• Competency framework designers on competency framework design: Jeff Griffiths on transversal and vertical skills

• Competency framework designers on competency framework design: The chunkers and the slice and dicers

• Competency framework designers on competency framework design: Victoria Pazukha

• Two podcasts on competency model design from Vancouver

• The A in KSA is for Abilities or Attitudes or Attributes?

• Do competency frameworks need competency definitions?

• Should you have a personal competency model?

• Designing a skill competency model - the Ibbaka approach

• Design research - How do people approach the design of skill and competency models?

• Designing a blueprint for your competency model framework

• From competency model design to competency model generation

• The WEF on Building a Common Language for Skills at Work

• Aligning skill and competency models with microcredentials - a conversation between Don Presant and Kul Sharma

• Three Metaphors for Skills and Competencies

• The Skills for Career Mobility - Interview with Dennis Green

• Competencies or skills - what should you assess?

• Lessons Learned Launching and Scaling Capability Management Programs

• Designing a Competency Model for Innovation Coaches

• Talent Transformation - A Conversation with Eric Shepherd, Martin Belton and Steven Forth

• Who cares about skill and competency models

• Competency Model Definitions - the IEEE ups its game

• Competency Models Made Easy - Two Simple Spreadsheets to Build Your Own Competency Models (this post)

• Simple (very simple) skill and competency models

• Individual - Team - Organizational use cases for skill and competency management

• Design decisions for developing a competency framework

• What is skill management?

• Competency models are living documents and need curation

• Some key use cases for competency model adoption

• Designing the Open Competency Model Architecture

• A third skillscape

• Building skill and competency models together

• Getting past competency model PTSD

• Co-creation of Competency Models for Customer Success and Pricing Excellence

• Competencies for Adaptation to Climate Change – An Interview with Dr. Robin Cox

• Architecting the Competencies for Adaptation to Climate Change Open Competency Model

• Introducing open competency models

• Integrating Skills and Competencies in the Talent Management Ecosystem

• Organizational values and competency models – survey results

• Why your job architecture needs a competency model

• Are values part of your competency model?

• How to build competency models

• A skill name is just a word, isn’t it?

• Current trends in skill and competency management

• Enabling internal mobility - a design thinking approach

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