Competence

What are the competences?

What competences does the company need?

What are the competences of the competences?

The concept of competence embraces many different areas: generally speaking, we can say that a competence in the workplace is the ability of effective management, simultaneously implementing skills, commitment and knowledge. The worker must therefore posses and know how to carefully use the necessary tools, such as knowledge and skills, but he must also know how to organize them.

If follows that competence is both closely linked to the individual and to the context. It is natural, therefore, that the company identifies and keeps under control the skills of the staff, especially in relation to the core competence, that is what distinguishes it from the competitors.

 

To understand if the Team has the right skills, we must first understand what specific skills are necessary for the Company.

The analysis of skills is a tool for verification and business development, a process capable of orienting the organizarion in terms of investments, strategies and organizational improvement. After analyzing the skills applied to professional life, you can focus on personal skills closely related to the company’s core business.

 

In general, the most important skills are the technical and managerial ones since they contain the foundations of any company within them.

Small businesses often consider technical skills as a starting point. But those capable of making a real difference are the managerial skills, both in a multinational and family business. Once you have defined the necessary skills, you must also be able (and a little critical!) to evaluate whether you already have them and at what level.

 

What are the useful skills for your company?

And how do you get them? Through training or simply by purchasing figures or companies that already own them?

 

Some skills, in fact, can be purchased (an example can be Vodafone who, rather than investing in internal growth, preferred to acquire an external company (Tele2) that already had the needed ability); the skills that cannot be purchased, on the other hand, represent the company’s Core Business, and they’re the ones we must invest in, ensuring they will be protected, developed and enhanced.

Distintive (core) company competences are resources capable of producing added value, which are difficult to be replaced or imitated because they arise from a combination of different resources. They are intrinsic characteristics of a company, configurable as “special” as they allow the company to be more competitive. They are therefore considered a determining factor in the competitive system.

Why is it so important to define Competences?

In the growing process, many define a goal and then get lost when it comes to deciding how to achieve it. From the abstract part of the Vision is therefore necessary to move on to a more concrete phase, the real stake of the team. If the necessary tools and knowledge are not clear, team success will never be possible.

 

It’s like wanting to cook a cake without having a cookbook nor the ingredients 😉