Positive
living requires sustained accomplishment. Accomplishment is rarely
individualistic; it requires at least two parties, in many cases several. Accomplishment
need not necessarily be only material; it could be philosophical or spiritual
too. Most, if not all, of material accomplishments are bilateral or
multilateral. From a conceptual viewpoint, even multilateral accomplishments
can be reduced to bilateral ones; for example, an interactive accomplishment
between agencies of government and several firms can be seen as a broad
government-industry interaction or accomplishment. Even an apparently
individualistic accomplishment of attaining spiritual nirvana is an interactive
accomplishment between the mind and soul of an individual. The key question is
how any interaction between entities can be translated into mutual
accomplishment. The answer to this question determines how people and societies
can achieve positive living.
Typically,
activities precede achievement even as thoughts or intents precede activities.
When firms and governments desire to promote industrial growth, several actions
such as formulation of industrial policies, establishment of industries and
commencement of commercial operations must take place. When someone desire to
achieve nirvana, he or she must have a meditative conversation with his or her
soul to achieve a state of tranquil mindfulness. All these myriad forms of activities
with others and self can be seen as forms of engagement. How well these
activities are accomplished is not a function of intent; rather it is a
function of how genuine and effective the engagement is. The robustness of
engagement depends on two principal factors; competency in engagement and ownership
in engagement. Together, these form a competency-ownership interlock.
Competency
Competency
is the ability to do a job well. Competency, in a more focused sense, is the
skill needed to do a particular job or meet a particular task well. Competency
has a specific need as well as a broader need. Every job brings in its stride
certain unexpected occurrences. For example, in spite of measurement of all
parameters a raw material may behave in an unexpected fashion while being
machined. In spite of understanding human anatomy well, both academically and
practically, a surgeon may experience an unexpected internal organ structure.
One therefore needs to have specific competency to do a particular job but also
a generic competency to build on the specific competencies by adaptation of
specific competencies or integration of additional skills. The artisan who
builds a superstructure, for example, must be able to address how a
construction must be managed in turns and crevices to avoid water seepage. In
other words a construction worker must have enough knowledge of waterproofing,
and a waterproofing worker enough knowledge of construction.
Competency
gets built through a continuous learning process, first through education and
next through experience. Competency building
is a behavioral process as much as it is an intellectual process. It is a
combination of educating oneself through formal or informal processes. It
requires opening up of oneself without ego to what is required for the current
state at one level and be prepared for future state at another level. Not
respecting the teaching and learning processes in the school and college phase
and not respecting the observing and learning processes in the employment phase
impede competency building. Competitive learning which dominates the
contemporary learning processes takes people ahead on examination or selection
criteria but not in terms of true learning. Competency building requires a
combination of focus on the core and diversity for the future. Each learning experience
gives an opportunity to discover what one is really good at life, and what
makes one truly actualized.
The ability
to build optimal levels of competency at different stages of life and in the
context of various tasks is dependent on an individual maximizing one’s
performance through a complex balance of competition and collaboration.
Competition is an intrinsic feature of human psychology stemming from recognition
that resources are limited and wants are unlimited. Collaboration is a
contractual feature of social psychology stemming from a realization that by
pooling resources and skills one can be more competitive than others.
Ownership
Ownership means
that something belongs to someone. Ownership had been the central thesis and
the vortex of myriad debates of economic policy. Private versus State ownership
had been at the center of debate over private versus public capitalism. Over
the last centuries, practical economics has seen the relative success of
private ownership and enterprise over state ownership and enterprise. Major
private enterprises, even in advanced countries wedded to free capitalism, have
seen failures of private ownership and management while some public
enterprises, even in developing economies, have seen successes of state ownership
and management. Yet, on a broader and relative plane private ownership has
emerged as a better driver of greater success. In this context, it is somewhat
enigmatic that the word ownership gets well used but also misused in individual
or business performance context.
The urge to
own is inherent in human evolution, transiting from total dependence to
semi-dependence, independence and interdependence in different shades. A child who for the first time tries to crawl
or walk by himself or herself, or tries to play with articles is unknowingly
but spontaneously is, in fact, taking ownership of his or her life. Yet, as the
child grows up and as competitive learning and employment processes divide
people into different categories, the concept of ownership gets distorted. From
ownership based on natural curiosity and quest for independence, people migrate
to ownership based on focus and specialization, rules and regulations, and
rewards and risks. The trend shifts from doing what one beckons one
intrinsically to what one must do, or must appear to do. The context and
drivers shift to expectations of others, be it family members, teachers,
friends or employers. As a result, individuals may own qualifications but not
the intrinsic learning or knowledge, and may own jobs but not the inherent
processes or outcomes.
Ownership is
both transactional and philosophical. A teacher needs to own his or her subject
but more importantly must also own his or her pupils. The teacher must also own
in a broader sense the school itself, even though he or she is just one
stakeholder. Effective ownership comes from genuine identification with a
cause. Real ownership comes with one’s genuine sense of belonging to a cause or
with a role rather than from a view that a role belongs to oneself.
Competency-ownership
grid
Obviously,
if one is competent for a task and has ownership of the task, one would be able
to deliver an optimal performance for the benefit of all stakeholders including
the performer. However, life being not so simple, we have opposing polarities
of incompetence and escapism to competence and ownership respectively. To be
objective, both competence and incompetence are relative terms which need to be
understood with reference to a task (and a natural or acquired ability to meet
the performance requirements of the task) while ownership and escapism are also
relative terms which need to be understood with reference to the task (and a
natural or conditioned aptitude to stay committed to the task). Competency-ownership
matrix therefore needs to be assessed on a case by case basis by individuals as
well as organizations. As with a 2X2 matrix, there could be four combinations
of Competent Ownership, Incompetent Ownership, Escapist Competence and Escapist
Incompetence, all of which tends to be individual and organizational realities.
Competent
Ownership drives long term sustainable performance in all bilateral and
multilateral relationships. It should be the goal of all team members and
leaders to find periodically the right match of abilities and tasks on one hand
and instill and continuously encourage a sense of belongingness on the other
hand. Competent Ownership does not stay fixed throughout entire career spans
and organizational journeys. Individuals
and leaders need to continuously review the effectiveness of competent
ownership. Incompetent Ownership is a correctable feature of team dynamics but
needs careful solution. Just because an individual is not suited in terms of
skills to a domain placing the individual in another domain may not guarantee
success unless the individual has a sense of belongingness to the new domain as
well. Moving one from Incompetent Ownership to Competent Ownership needs to be
a calibrated exercise.
It is
relatively easy to evaluate one’s competence but is difficult to assess one’s
sense of belongingness. It is not unusual, therefore, to find Escapist
Competence in organizations, which is unfortunate. Individuals who do not have
a true sense of belongingness and leaders who are unable to assess the pockets
of escapist competence leave the individuals and organizations in a state of
false complacency. And, of course Escapist Incompetence is an organizational
nightmare. Individuals who are neither matched to the tasks in terms of their
skills and have no belongingness to the tasks constitute a category that needs
to be addressed with urgency and understanding both by individuals and the
leaders. Whether a drastic restructuring of talent and tasks helps in
minimizing the occurrence of Escapist Incompetence needs to be evaluated prior
to drastic actions.
A virtuous
grid
Clearly, it
would be ideal for all individual, organizational and social endeavors to have
only Competent Ownership as the underlying human factor of performance. It is,
however, unlikely that in an organizational continuum, it would be a natural
occurrence. Even structured processes of self-selection by individuals and
multi-layered assessments by others may not result in a virtuous grid where
all, or almost all, space is occupied by the Competent Ownership segment. It
is, therefore, an individual responsibility as well as a leadership
responsibility to constantly retool oneself as the tasks evolve, and recommit
to tasks on one hand with a continued sense of belongingness. That said,
mismatch of task-competency and task-belongingness equations need not
necessarily mean end of the road. Such awareness may simply open up new vistas
of opportunity.
The basic
thesis is not as much as about the grid, per se but the need to be on a mode of
continuous learning and developing a sense of belonging to the tasks on hand. In
a dynamic world, knowledge keeps increasing and the tasks keep transforming in
scale and scope. When one stops learning, one starts becoming less successful.
When one starts losing the sense of belonging, one stops enjoying what one
does. The good news is that self-awareness as well as team awareness can help
individuals stay in the zone of Competent Ownership. Virtuous organizations
excel not only in the much emphasized aspects of strategy and execution but
also in the matching of abilities, tasks and ownership at individual, team and
organizational levels. In all forms of bilateral and multilateral engagement,
individual to individual, individual to entity, entity to entity or government
to society, Competent Ownership is the only solution to sustainable and
equitable development.
Posted by Dr
CB Rao on June 8, 2014
No comments:
Post a Comment