HRHeadStart #61: Experience vs. Competency Maps; Guide for Using AI; Improving 1%

The Talent Agenda

Competency frameworks are considered to be the foundational infrastructure for talent management. They define the knowledge, skills and abilities that lead to high performance in a role. And it is assumed that if we have a clear idea of what these competencies are then we can get better at identifying/developing talent and future-proofing the business from a skills perspective.

All of this makes sense, except it can be hard for the business and HR to implement them. When we design competency frameworks at scale, they tend to become unwieldy, hard to understand, hard to assess and incredibly time-consuming to implement. But, is there an alternative?

Experience Maps define specific experiences required to excel in a role or a function. They describe the outcomes one must achieve to prove competence, instead of an exhaustive competency framework which starts sounding like job descriptions. They are also relatively easier to understand (experiences are real and tangible) and assess (experiences are observable). Importantly, they also serves as a career navigation tool for employees because it outlines the portfolio of experiences they need to build to succeed.

Bonus material: A nice compendium of all recent McKinsey articles on the Future of Work. Whether you are interested in research on HR operating models, labour market, employee experience, hybrid work, diversity & inclusion or talent management, you will find interesting stuff to read.

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Working Better

Ethan Mollick

, a professor at the Wharton School, has been working to integrate AI in his classes. He has written an interesting “practical guide to using AI to do stuff”. He talks about how AI can be applied to increase productivity, creativity and accelerate learning. I would love to understand how you are engaging with these new technologies, so feel free to write to me for exchanging ideas.

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Tiny Thought

It’s good to have big goals, but better to supplement them with an action plan to improve 1% today, tomorrow and everyday. Consistency is more important than intensity.