Competencies govern the human resources world, irrespective of your industry or geographic location. All organisational systems revolve around competencies - which in theory define successful performance within the company structure and ultimately should result in strategic achievement.

The concept of competency started in the 1950's with John Flannagan's Critical Incident Technique which later catalysed David McCelland's discovery and establishment of the term competency.

He defined competency as: "an underlying characteristic which enables them to deliver superior performance in a given job, role or situation". McCelland also went on to say, "Competencies are not biased, and can be learned and developed over time".

In the 1980's Richard Boyatzis, a professor of Organizational Behavior at Case Western Reserve University and an expert in the field of emotional intelligence, evolved our thinking noting that: "certain characteristics or abilities of the person enable him or her to demonstrate the appropriate specific actions".

Today we've taken the best of these great minds and we now consider a combination of attitude, applied knowledge, behaviour, skills and talent (our inherent ability) in combinations to define specific requirements or inputs for performance in a given role or function.

Pattern theory, formulated by Ulf Grenader from the Pattern Theory Division at Brown University in the US, is a mathematical formula that describes the knowledge of the world as patterns. Today, we apply this theory to understand mathematics and the sciences.

In order to understand the components of competencies, David McCelland in his original work in the 1950s considered the application of patterns to identify "points" pattern theory) or critical incidents but somewhere along the way we stopped looking for patterns, and focused on the components within the pattern combination.

Our working world has evolved significantly over time; everything is faster and the realities of performing in a modern world is fundamentally different today than it was 34 years ago, when the thinking around competencies was crystalised.

Yes, competencies are customised to suit the changing needs of the business, however, we have seen in our work, over the last eight years, that there is a clear and apparent evolution.

In order to understand what defines success, we have taken time to scientifically break down the components that define performance in a given area - similarly as one would take apart a motor engine in order to understand all the components that make it run.

However, when one evaluates the performance of the vehicle's engine we look at it in its entirety - we target consistency and separate once off experiences - as they are just that - once off - and skew the real performance of the engine.

Whilst on some level we do look at performance in this context, our traditional view of competencies forces us to drill into specific components - which means that often we lose context and this skews our focus.

We all know that people have different strengths, and there is extensive research that tell us that in developing people we should focus on these productive patterns: development is not the opposite of low performance areas and so forth.

In other words by only focusing on the perceived components of low performance, we begin to develop mediocrity as we are not helping people turn their talents into assets and truly excel in their areas of strength. Our bigger picture or pattern focus is clouded.

Developing a modern view of competencies

I am in no way suggesting that competencies do not add value. I am suggesting we need to change our perspective by looking at the bigger picture of consistent performance requirements and individual performance.

Competencies can be cumbersome and it is impossible to create carbon copies of performance in a role or organisation. Similarly, by focusing on what people need to improve all the time has resulted in negative behaviours within the corporate environment such as: defensiveness, protectionism, insecurity and as a result increased vying for status and power.

Through identifying consistent patterns within processes, individuals, business units and organisations, one gains a sense of where the focus should be and how its resultant effectiveness can be duplicated.

Also, consistent patterns also help identify new talent and allow us to leverage strengths rather than develop weakness. These identified patterns help us efficiently gauge our points of performance.

We have begun testing this concept with some extraordinary results, as this approach allows us to move into the future through increasing productivity in business and people patterns.

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