Sometimes a very simple model is all that is needed. And paring a model down to its essentials can reveal what really matters. Here are two simple approaches to a skill and competency model. For general behaviors, relevant across your organization, use just behaviors and skills. For new capabilities, that you want to cultivate, use roles and skills. If you want to connect these to learning and development, add learning resources.

Customer journey maps have become a key tool in customer experience (CX) and user experience (UX) design work. They are one of the best ways to organize service designs. We recommend calling out trust as an explicit part of these maps. Trust and skill management are tightly connected. To succeed with skill management people have to trust the system, the data and, most importantly, each other.

Individual, team and organizational use cases for skill and competency models fit together and reinforce each other. Understanding the connections between use cases will help you implement a skill and competency strategy. Choose one use case of each type to get started.

Our webinar with Claude Werder at Brandon Hall on 5 Strategies to Transform HR drew an engaged audience who had many questions. We answer them here.

Performance management will be enriched by skill intelligence. Understanding core and target skills, fostering their development drives performance.

Redesigning the job architecture has become part of implementing a new HRIS. These architectures are hollow shells without a rich skill and competency model.

Competency models are a powerful way to organize work, enable internal mobility and align potential with performance. How do you build a competency model?

When you meet a new person what do you ask first? Most often we start by asking what they do. Maybe we should start by understanding each other's values.

Models help us understand the world. In HR and learning & development, the important models are for skills & competencies. See the results of a recent survey.

Skill and competency models are often used to shape learning and development strategies. The conventional process is to find the skill gaps and address them, but can we go beyond that? If so, how?

Recent research by LinkedIn found that skill management is the most important focus on learning and development in 2018.

Skill management works when seeded with skill & project data, connected to systems like CRM & project management when people get direct value from use.

Managing business to optimize for staff utilization will ultimately lead to commoditization. Applying skills to build differentiation is a better strategy.