The need to train and develop staff has been “on the agenda” recently.
The World Economic Forum tells us that 50% of all professionals need to develop their knowledge and skills significantly to be in the game by 2025. Knowledge is very much a commodity.
Last Thursday, the report entitled “Willingness to choose care and care” from the Swedish Public Investigation Service was submitted to the government.
In an interview, the investigator and coordinator Göran Jonsson, when asked what is most important to ensure competence, says that “the most important thing to increase competence is to understand the requirements”.
>> This means that we need to link the requirements of the business directly to the skills needed to meet those requirements. <<
How do you ensure that you have understood the requirements?
Anyone who has read my book, A Little Like the Dalai Lama, but for Organisations, will recognise my answer to that question. The answer is that the requirements for competence in a business come from being crystal clear with its value-creating flows, which we also call processes or projects.
It is only from knowing WHY to do something, and WHAT to do, and HOW to do it, that you can begin to specify the competences required. If the business focuses more on its line organisation than it does on its processes and projects, well, then it will not get a fair picture of what competencies are required.
Unfortunately, in many businesses it is so vague about WHY, WHAT and HOW to do things, that it becomes almost impossible to specify the skills needed. And if you can’t show what skills are really needed, then it becomes more guesswork and therefore difficult to decide how to develop skills.
Investigator Göran Jonsson went on to say that it is important to understand “that the requirements are constantly being raised”.
If you don’t have very good control over WHAT to do and HOW to do it to create value, then it’s not possible to see the increased demands coming either. Once there, it’s too late. Then you’re left with your “beard in the mailbox”.
The business is not working properly and then comes the big costs. Or, on a personal level, you find that you can no longer rely on the university degree you once took and the experience you have gained over many years. Demands have increased faster than they have developed, which means that they have become de facto inferior.
Time is short and resources are dwindling in many areas, especially in the public sector.
So to ensure that you and your business are in the right position to put in place an aggressive skills development plan, you need to have a full understanding of the requirements picture. And you only get the requirements picture by having very clear, transparent and common answers about WHAT you are going to do and HOW you are going to do it.
And this is based on what the customer expects, not what you in the line organisation “think” is creating value. It is the customer, whatever you call him, who ultimately decides whether you have the right answer or not.
There are more lessons to be learned from this report, and I will return to what can be learned in future newsletters.
Until then, I wish you a wonderful midsummer week.
Matts
PS. Want help shaping your value creation flows? Then get back to me and we can help you. If only to reconcile the work you have done or are doing. Sometimes you just need a different view of your own work. As we all know, it is difficult to see the outside of the label if you are sitting in the jar… 🙂
