Competency models are often used by people in learning and development. The competency model is used to guide the curriculum and course design to ensure that the learning supports the desired competencies. There are similarities between approaches taken to designing learning, such as ADDIE and design thinking, and the design of competency models.

Some see competency definitions as the heart of competency frameworks. Ibbaka supports this in its Competency Modeling Environment, but our own approach is a bit different. Ibbaka dynamically assembles competency models or frameworks from data on roles, behaviors, skills and performance. Competency definitions are not always included. This gives more adaptive models that are better aligned with performance.

Skill and competency models often focus narrowly on what is needed for work or a profession. But this is too narrow a perspective. We are more than the skills we need for work, and the work that we do requires more than those skills. A holistic approach can reveal more or our potential and make it easier to find the people we need to be working with.

Skill and competency models are generally seen as an organizational tool. They are thought of as a way to organize information about skills and competencies and align them with the organization to support skill gap analysis or career pathing. As individuals take more control more their careers, skill and competency models can become more personalized and a tool fo individuals and teams.

Design research is used to get a deeper understanding of the different approaches that are taken to a design task. Skill and competency models are part of the designed world. Over the years Ibbaka has evolved its own approach to their design, which we update here.

Skills have been described as the new currency of business. Understanding skills has become an important skillset in its own right. One of the best ways to understand a person or a team’s skills is the skill interview. This is a structured approach that leads to a coded transcript that can be used in many ways in introducing skills.

One way to get started with skill and competency management is to build a simple model for a basic competency and then use that model as a template for adding other models. This can work, but attention must be paid from this beginning to scalability and extensibility.

Designing a competency model can be daunting. There is so much information to locate and integrate, so many things to validate and get approved. Is there a better way forward? Ibbaka is using its skill AI to generate competency models. This reduces development costs and timelines while keeping the model dynamic and relevant.

The World Economic Forum (WEF) has issued a new (January 2021) report on Building a Common Language for Skills at Work. They give the reasons as to why a global skill taxonomy is needed, propose and architecture and begin to define skills. Ibbaka will support this architecture on the Ibbaka Talent Platform.

Metaphors are central to how we understand the world and think about complex problems. Three metaphors that we apply to skill and competency models are the chemical, the evolutionary and the neural. Each of these provides its own insights and when combined can fuel innovation.

Job mobility will not be enough in a rapidly changing economy. We need to go beyond this to support career mobility. Dennis Green both exemplifies this in his own life and has thought deeply about the question. He shares his experience and ideas in this interview.

There is often confusion around the definition of skills and competencies. Are these different words for the same thing or do they refer to different things with different uses. The IEEE 1484.20 Defining Competencies standard is a work in progress, but progress is being made on shared definitions for critical terms.

Talent will move to the front in 2021 strategic planning. What are the critical questions to ask as you prepare your 2021 talent strategy?

There are emerging best practices in how to design and role out capability management systems that leverage skill and competency models. We summarize some of what we are learning in this presentation.

Jennifer Rogers is one of the leading practitioners of skill and competency management, having led roll outs for major companies in the energy and resource sector and having worked as a learning and development consultant. We interviewed her to get her view on the state of the art and the impact that skill and competency management can have on the organizations and individuals.

In this post we give a practical example of how we developed a small competency model. The model is for Innovation Coaching. It will be of interest to everyone responsible for designing and managing competency models, and for people with a specific interest in innovation and coaching. We begin with some context on the Innovation Mentor Network that Ibbaka is supporting.

Connecting a Role or a Job defined in the Competency Model to a Skill Profile can change how you see yourself. Your collaborators and peers give you insight into your skills while the model populates your profile with new skills, some of which will be the core skills for your role, others will be target skills that you want to develop.

Will the experience of Covid 19, physical isolation, working from home and the associated economic disruption change how we work? If it will, HR and talent management will also need to change. And this will impact our skills and competencies. Share your thoughts on how HR, talent management and critical skills will change after Covid 19.