Competency-Ownership Grid: Towards Reinforced Accomplishment

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 

The Spectrum of Success and Failure, and the Nirvana of Performance

Every act has an outcome that is noted as success or failure. Act, in this context, is considered to include a plan or strategy that is intended to be implemented.  Human beings and organizational entities are increasingly concerned and preoccupied with the results or outcomes of their acts. The more the investment of resources in an act, be it time, effort or money, the greater is the expectation of success. The resources can be tangible ones as above or intangible ones such as encouragement, environment and ecosystem. The student who invests a lot in seeking admission to a premier course in a premium institute as well as his or her family that provides the resources, tangible and intangible, both aim for success and are deeply affected by failure. Organizational entities which are backed by founders, investors and other share holders with investments of resources are also severally and collectively impacted by successes and failures.    

Hindu philosophy, probably and other philosophies too, consider successes and failures as events in the wheel of life, scripted and written by Destiny. While the Hindu philosophy exhorts the individual to perform his ’dharma’ or duty, it expects the individual to perform the duty without expectations. It also postulates “nirvana’ as the ultimate life’s goal. Practically, however, in the day to day life individuals and organizations live to succeed while performing their duties, with the objective of success casting an overwhelming hue on the call of duty. Premier education thus becomes a lever for social recognition and financial prosperity for the student and the family. Growth and profitability become the platform for global competitiveness and economic dominance for the entities and investors. Various individual and corporate acts, including adoption of technologies and management processes, are designed and practiced by individuals and entities to achieve success and avoid failure.

Success and failure

Despite the fact that everyone sets up himself or his organization for success there tend to be successes and failures in the long run. There are two ways of looking at this; the statistical way and the karmic way. The statistical approach teaches us that in any universe or its representative large sample, the chosen dimension, be it an attribute or outcome, statistically follows a distribution, in most cases the normal distribution. There would be as many outperformers as underperformers around a statistically determined median, with the shape of the bell curve in terms of the peak and spread depending upon the characteristics of the universe. The extreme outperformers as well as the extreme underperformers have low probability while the mid-rangers have the maximum probability of occurrence. Extending the statistical approach, success and failure, in the long term, are seen as resultants of an environmental and a competitive landscape rather than as something that is completely determined by the performer.

The Hindu karmic approach, on the other hand, postulates as in Christianity that one reaps as one sows. The more good efforts one puts in, the more successful would one be. That said, what constitutes good and what constitutes bad is an individualistic determination. Going through a coaching institution would be good for one class of students while studying and stretching on one’s own would be good for another class. While a strategy of product specialization would be appropriate for one class of firms a strategy of product diversification could be appropriate for another class of firms. Even within the karmic approach, therefore, the choice of right seed could be of importance. While statistical approach focuses on the distribution of a range of outcomes, the karmic approach teaches us to choose the right ingredients. Yet, many individuals and entities fail to be circumspect and objective in their choices. The cloudiness is due to the spectral effects of success and failure on the psyche of individuals and organizations.

Spectral effects of success and failure

The outcomes of success and failure have three effects each on the psychology of an individual or entity. These six shades of success and failure together with the central disposition of being unmoved by success or failure together constitute the spectrum of success and failure. As is said, nothing succeeds like success, and nothing fails like failure too. As an individual or organization goes through repeated successes or failures the psychological disposition with which such repeated successes and failures are absorbed and assimilated in the human or enterprise psychological system determines the future propensity to success or failure. At the core of individual as well as organizational mindset, the individual constitutes the core, the only difference perhaps being that in an organizational setting the collective disposition of individuals determines the predisposition.

The three effects of success could be increasingly intoxicating on an individual or entity, eroding the very platform of success. The first feeling of “confidence” that accompanies initial success is a much needed and well deserved index of success. Repeated successes, unless one is mindful, lead to “complacence” of success whereby success is taken to be granted leading to a lowering of guard. When successes follow one after the other, by design or default, even in a situation of complacence, one tends to slip into “arrogance” of success, whereby one fails to accept feedback or ignores to act on it. Each of the three states has a different influence on the psychological disposition. Confidence (a belief in one’s ability to be successful) is an essential ingredient of success; it leads to success and also gets reinforced by success. Complacency (a feeling of being too satisfied to recognize the need for change) is an outcome of ignorance of the factors that drove successes of the past. Arrogance (a feeling of excessive pride that rejects or alienates other people and other inputs) is an outcome of the false sense of infallibility that some acquire as a result of continued success.

The three effects of failure could be increasingly debilitating on an individual or entity, eroding the resilience to recover and succeed which is possible even after failure. The first feeling of “concern” that accompanies initial failure is a much needed and well advised introspection of failure. Repeated failures, unless one analyzes the root causes, lead to “helplessness” of failure whereby failure is taken to be inevitable, leading to lowered or misdirected efforts to succeed. When failures follow one after the other, by design or default, one tends to slip into a state of “despondency”, whereby one fails to recognize the residual strengths and opportunities. Concern (a feeling of responsibility to an unexpected outcome) is an essential first step to recognizing failure; it leads to introspection which, in turn, must help eliminate causes of failure. Helplessness (a feeling of inability to take care by oneself) is an outcome of an inability to introspect for root causes which, in turn, makes one rely on external miracles than internal strengths. Despondency (a feeling of sadness and hopelessness) is the sense of defeat that some slip into as a result of continued failures.     

“Equanimity” is a calm state of mind that does not respond with excessive emotions, positive or negative, to one’s successes and failures. If the six effects of success and failure described above, ranging from “despondency, helplessness and concern” of failure to “confidence, complacence and arrogance” of success, are a sequential part of a spectrum, the mid-point is the feeling of equanimity. Equanimity does not mean that a person or an entity is either unmindful of successes and failures or driven by extreme confidence or despondency. Rather, equanimity requires that one analyzes one’s successes and failures in terms of key drivers and root causes respectively and works on them for ensuring further successes and overcoming failures. Each success and failure requires prompt and considered attention as part of the equanimity approach.

Nirvana of performance

Nirvana, in Hinduism or Buddhism refers to the state of peace and happiness that a person achieves after giving up all personal desires. Performance in life’s context requires pursuit of advancement based on core competencies and core values until one believes that the end state of total peace and happiness without any further desires (or ‘nirvana’) is reached. This state is typically reached at the end of one’s career, capping a series of successes and failures, with successes hopefully being many more than failures. In the pursuit of nirvana, however, one needs to manage the spectral effects of successes and failures in such a manner that one is within the band of confidence and concern, letting equanimity determining how one manages successes and failures.

For entities, however, there can be no end-state as they are perpetual instruments for generating economic wealth and social equity. The key to enterprise equanimity lies in the elegant and effective manner in which the team members individually and collectively manage the spectral impact of successes and failures. The considerations in the blog post are powerful emotional or philosophical guides to understand and manage the drivers and impacts of successes and failures. To provide a practical platform one would need to see specific examples of how the spectral effects are evident in leaders and managers, and how they impact the management of the spectral effects of successes and failures in their own and their entities’ lives. These would be covered in a sequel to this blog post.      

Posted by Dr CB Rao on February 10, 2013