Tag: People

  • Aligning Skills with Roles – Building the Capabilities That Matter

    Aligning Skills with Roles – Building the Capabilities That Matter

    In our previous post, we discussed how defining Vital Functions is key to providing clarity and direction for your team. By focusing on the core responsibilities of each role, your employees can prioritize their efforts and drive results that align with your business goals.

    Now, we turn to the next critical step: aligning the right skills with each role. It’s not enough to simply define what an employee should do—you need to ensure they have the technical abilities and behavioral attributes to succeed in their role. When skills are aligned with responsibilities, your team can work more efficiently, make better decisions, and grow alongside your business.

    In this post, we’ll explore how to match the right skills with each role, the types of skills that matter, and how to foster a culture of continuous development to ensure long-term business success.

    Why Aligning Skills with Roles Is Essential

    Aligning skills with roles ensures that your employees are equipped to perform their core responsibilities effectively. When the right skills are in place, your team will:

    1. Improve performance and productivity: Employees can complete tasks more efficiently when their skills match the demands of their role.
    2. Make informed decisions: With the right technical knowledge, employees are better equipped to make smart decisions that benefit the business.
    3. Enhance collaboration and teamwork: Behavioral attributes like adaptability, resilience, and communication enable employees to work well with others.
    4. Achieve long-term growth: Skills alignment allows employees to thrive in their roles, leading to personal development and business growth.

    Key Types of Skills to Align with Roles
    When aligning skills with roles, it’s important to consider both technical abilities and behavioral attributes. Let’s break these down:

    1. Technical Abilities: What Employees Need to Know
    Technical abilities are the practical, task-related skills employees need to perform their core responsibilities. These are often specific to the role and include competencies such as:

    • Data analysis
    • Project management
    • Software proficiency
    • Marketing strategy
    • Logistics coordination

    For example, a Marketing Manager may need to be skilled in content creation tools, data analytics platforms, and campaign management systems to effectively manage campaigns and measure their success.

    How to Align Technical Abilities with Roles:

    • Identify the Vital Functions of each role (as discussed in Blog 2) and determine the technical skills needed to perform those functions effectively.
    • Assess current skill levels through performance reviews, skills assessments, or employee feedback.
    • Provide training opportunities such as online courses, workshops, or mentorship programs to help employees develop the technical skills they need.

    2. Behavioral Attributes: How Employees Apply Their Skills
    Behavioral attributes are the interpersonal qualities that influence how employees interact with others, manage challenges, and contribute to a positive work environment. Examples of these attributes include:

    • Adaptability: The ability to embrace change and handle uncertainty.
    • Resilience: The capacity to bounce back from setbacks.
    • Collaboration: The ability to work well with others and contribute to team success.
    • Leadership: The skill to inspire and guide others toward shared goals.

    For instance, an Operations Manager responsible for logistics and vendor relations will benefit from resilience to handle supply chain disruptions and collaboration to work effectively with different departments.

    How to Align Behavioral Attributes with Roles:

    • Consider the interpersonal demands of each role and identify which attributes are most important for success.
    • Use behavioral assessments or feedback from team members to understand each employee’s strengths and areas for growth.
    • Foster a culture of continuous development by encouraging self-awareness, emotional intelligence, and team collaboration through coaching, team-building activities, or mentoring.

    Steps to Align Skills with Roles

    1. Define Vital Functions and Identify Skill Gaps
    Start by reviewing the Vital Functions of each role (as defined in Blog 2) and determine the skills—both technical and behavioral—needed to excel in those responsibilities. Once you’ve outlined these key requirements, it’s time to evaluate your current team. Assess which employees already possess the skills to effectively perform the vital functions and who might need additional development.

    If you find that certain vital functions require skills that aren’t present on your current team, this is an opportunity to hire externally. When hiring, ensure that the candidates have the requisite skills to successfully perform the role’s core responsibilities and contribute to your business goals.

    2. Assess Current Skills
    Use performance reviews, one-on-one meetings, or skills assessments to understand where each employee stands in terms of their technical abilities and behavioral attributes. Be open to feedback from your employees about areas they have skills that are under-utilized, unknown or where they need more development.

    3. Develop Tailored Training Programs
    Provide ongoing training opportunities to address the identified skill gaps. This could include:

    • Technical training: Online courses, certifications, or workshops to build new skills.
    • Behavioral coaching: Mentorship programs or leadership training to foster interpersonal skills.
    • Cross-functional projects: Encourage employees to take on roles in other departments to develop new competencies and broaden their experience.

    4. Encourage Continuous Learning and Development
    Skills aren’t static—they evolve. Encourage your team to embrace a growth mindset by prioritizing learning and personal development. This includes:

    • Offering employees learning stipends or access to educational resources.
    • Incorporating skill development goals into performance reviews.
    • Encouraging employees to take initiative in their learning journey and explore areas of interest that align with their role.

    Real-World Example: Aligning Skills with Roles in an Operations Team

    Imagine you have an Operations Manager overseeing logistics and vendor management. Their role is essential to maintaining smooth business operations, but lately, there have been issues with delayed shipments and vendor communication breakdowns.

    By reviewing their Vital Functions, you identify two key areas where skill gaps exist:

    1. Logistics Management: The Operations Manager lacks proficiency in using data analytics tools to optimize delivery times and streamline operations.
    2. Vendor Relations: The Operations Manager struggles with managing difficult vendor negotiations, indicating a need for stronger resilience and collaboration skills.

    Steps to Address Skill Gaps:

    • Provide technical training: Enroll the Operations Manager in a course on logistics analytics tools to improve their ability to manage supply chain efficiency.
    • Offer behavioral coaching: Pair the Operations Manager with a mentor who excels in negotiation and resilience, helping them build stronger interpersonal skills for vendor management. As a side note, the mentor does not have to be inside the organization.

    The result? With the right skills in place, the Operations Manager can improve efficiency, reduce delays, and strengthen vendor relationships, all while growing as a leader in the organization.

    The Impact of Aligning Skills with Roles
    When you align the right skills with each role in your business, you set the foundation for long-term success. Here’s how:

    • Increased performance: Employees who have the right skills can perform their core responsibilities efficiently, leading to better business outcomes.
    • Higher engagement: When employees are confident in their abilities and see the value of their contributions, they’re more engaged and motivated.
    • Greater adaptability: As employees develop both technical abilities and behavioral attributes, they’re better equipped to handle changes and challenges in the business environment.
    • Stronger teams: With aligned skills, your team can collaborate more effectively, driving success across the organization.

    Conclusion: Building the Right Capabilities for Success
    Aligning skills with roles is about more than just ticking off tasks—it’s about empowering your employees to excel in their vital functions and contribute to the long-term success of your business. By providing the right training, mentorship, and development opportunities, you can build a team that’s not only capable but also engaged and ready to grow alongside your business.

    In the next post, we’ll take a closer look at Key Outcomes—how to measure success and hold employees accountable for achieving their goals. Stay tuned!

    Ready to start aligning skills with roles in your business?
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  • Do You Run Your Business Like a Sports Team?

    There are two things every sports team has: knowledge of the points scored during the game and knowledge, if not sense, of the performance of each player.

    Translated for your business:

    • A dashboard of your business goals – these are your points of the game
    • Player scorecards – this identifies and tracks the outcomes of the players in your business

    You need goals for your business.  However, please realize these goals represent the actions and decisions of the business.  Goals are not outcomes. Goals reflect the result of outcomes.

    A common definition of goals and one that I support:

    A business goal is an endpoint, accomplishment or target an organization wants to achieve in the short term or long term. Business goals can take many different forms and be aspirational or motivational, such as driving an organization toward a certain objective like improved customer service. They can also have very specific objectives, such as reaching a particular revenue target, net income, profit margin, profit goal or other financial milestone.

    Outcomes are the benefits or services each employee delivers directly to your customers or provides to support the business.  The results of employee outcomes can be seen in your goals.  Much like your team scoring a goal or scoring a touchdown is reflected in the score of the game.

    Every role in your business must have three to four outcomes identified.  These outcomes are what you are paying your employees to deliver.  And yes, your employees will have extra responsibilities, but these are not the outcomes of their role. Many job descriptions, get this point wrong.  They will state a long list of responsibilities, but not the outcomes.  This is a problem.  We’ll discuss this in a future blog.

    As a call to action:

    How well are you letting your organization know the score of the game?  You may be uncomfortable sharing actual numbers, and I get that, but your employees need some sort of indication of whether the business is winning or losing the game. Figure this out and start reporting the information out.  Every business will have a different cadence.  Some information should be reported daily and some weekly. It is a rare situation that you will report information out monthly, but it does happen.  The additional question, what information on the scoreboard will keep your team motivated or incentivized? Additionally, think about your key goals, like revenue.  For instance, what needs to happen in your business for revenue to be realized? What outcomes must occur in marketing, sales, operations and finance to get revenue?  These are some of the vital outcomes for your business.  Think about these and start to understand how paying attention to employee delivery on these outcomes will improve your business.