FORETHOUGHT
Understanding Competence
at Work
by Jörgen Sandberg
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FORETHOUGHT
i dea
Understanding
Competence at Work
Being good at your job means having
the right understanding of your job.
by Jörgen Sandberg
When you ask HR managers what agreed on who were the best engineers, varied widely and stemmed directly
makes a person competent, they often they differed on why they were the best. from the differences in the ways peo-
respond with a list of skills. Can some- Those differences, it seems, depended ple defined the job. I identified three
one do this job? Certainly, if she can do on how people understood the job. subgroups of employees, each with a
X, Y, and Z. How has she performed in distinct job definition, work focus, and
What Testing Means at Volvo
it? Very well, because her Swedish is flu- list of preferred skills. (See the exhibit
ent, and she s comfortable with fluid dy- The group was responsible for the test-  Three Views of Competence. )
namics. The attribute list also finds its ing and final development of new en- Sequential Optimizers. Members
way into training programs, which are gines. The work went through three of this first subgroup saw their work as
designed to help employees hone exist- stages: computer simulation, laboratory a series of steps, in which an engineer
ing skills and acquire new ones. testing, and road testing. The engineers tried to bring the engine up to speci-
Frontline managers, though, instinc- task was to ensure that the engine s per- fications in one, then another, per-
tively feel that competence is something formance matched customer require- formance category  fuel emissions, for
more than a list of attributes. They sense ments, which were expressed, following instance, and then horsepower. These
that a person s way of seeing work is just market research, as a set of quality stan- people valued technical skills the most,
as important; competent workers have dards in fuel consumption, horsepower, such as accurately performing tests
and understanding how
particular changes in the
Corporations need to shift the focus of their recruitment
environment affected per-
formance. Skills in learn-
and training programs from flawed attribute checklists
ing and teamwork were
not mentioned in ratings
toward identifying and, if necessary, changing people s
by these workers. What s
more, in describing the
understanding of what jobs entail.
skills they believed essen-
tial to success, sequential
a particular vision of what their work is emissions, and so forth. They looked, in optimizers stressed knowledge of one-
and why it is that way. And because they particular, at how performance along to-one relationships between perfor-
know that a person s competence is not these dimensions responded to changes mance categories and environmental
easily reduced to a standardized check- in external conditions such as tempera- conditions.
list of skills, frontline managers find the ture and humidity, and they adjusted Interactive Optimizers. In contrast,
recruitment process difficult and are the parameters of fuel flow and ignition members of the second subgroup saw
often dismissive of HR-inspired training accordingly. testing and development as an interac-
programs. To identify how group members in- tive system. Each time they simulated
Increasingly, research into compe- terpreted competence at work, I asked a change in temperature, for instance,
tence at work confirms this thinking. them to describe the qualities of a com- they tried to anticipate how the changes
A recent study I conducted with a group petent testing engineer and to explain would affect the engine s performance
of 50 testing engineers at the Volvo Car their understanding of testing and de- in all categories, not just one. The sys-
Corporation in Sweden revealed wide velopment. Although there was some temic approach of these engineers led
variation in views about the skills that (but not unanimous) agreement on what them to value learning and teamwork
a good testing engineer needed. Al- kinds of skills were needed for com- much more than their colleagues in the
though members of the group generally petence, the descriptions of the skills first subgroup. What s more, the inter-
2 Copyright © 2001 Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation. All rights reserved.
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FORETHOUGHT
Three Views of Competence
Research revealed three distinct job definitions among a group of Volvo s testing
engineers. Engineers in the three categories described in different ways the focus
of their work and the attributes needed to succeed.
Sequential Optimizers Interactive Optimizers Customer Optimizers
Job definition To make the engine perform To resolve trade-offs between To make the engine provide
according to specifications performance categories the customer with a good
driving experience
Main focus Individual performance All performance categories The driving experience
of activity categories together
Attribute 1: Recognize how changes in Not mentioned Not mentioned
Ability to one or more external conditions
interpret data influence another performance
category
Attribute 2: Take care in setting up tests Know when to test which Not mentioned
Accuracy performance category
Attribute 3: Know how the engine reacts to Know how the performance Possess practical sense
Knowledge changes in external conditions categories influence each other of how the engine works
of engine across performance categories as a whole
Attribute 4: Know how simulated tests Know how simulated changes in Know how well any simulated
Knowledge of for specific external conditions a number of external conditions changes in external conditions
how performance will likely affect specific will affect performance across reflect real conditions
parameters work performance categories all categories
Attribute 5: Not mentioned Are interested in how perfor- Find out more about
Ability to learn mance categories interact customer needs
Attribute 6: Not mentioned Cooperate with other members Cooperate with all colleagues
Ability to work of the group interested in driving perfor-
with others mance
active optimizers described the skills making changes to a system, but they customers driving needs. They also
they valued in very different terms than saw their goal differently. They tested reached out to people outside their own
the sequential optimizers. While the lat- and tuned the engines not as engineers group, such as designers or marketers.
ter described engine knowledge as un- trying to hit a number, but as ordinary The differences among the subgroups
derstanding how the engine reacted to drivers  imagining themselves as se- explained many of the variations in
changes in the various conditions, in- niors, students, commuters, or vacation- how individual engineers carried out
teractive optimizers saw it as knowing ers. The attributes they valued and the their jobs. The approach of the sequen-
how the different performance cate- way they described them reflected this tial optimizers, for instance, forced them
gories influenced each other. approach. Rather than learn about the to rework many parts of the simulation
Customer Optimizers. Members of interaction between engine perfor- stage, as all adjustments had to be
this subgroup agreed with the interac- mance categories, for example, they checked for possible impacts on previ-
tive optimizers that their job was about wanted to develop their knowledge of ously tested performance categories.
3
march 2001
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FORETHOUGHT
Customer optimizers preferred road derstanding of the job. Customer opti- attributes that really determine success,
testing to physical laboratory tests, mizers, they said, were more accurate how easy will it be for them to acquire
which, they believed, did not fully repli- and methodical, and more capable at those attributes?
cate a customer s driving experience. analyzing how conditions affected in- In principle, the remedy is obvious:
dividual engine performance catego- corporations need to shift the focus of
The Match with
ries. They did not think that teamwork, their recruitment and training programs
Perceived Competence
learning, or an appreciation of real driv- from flawed attribute checklists toward
Strikingly, all the subgroups agreed that ing conditions  skills the best engineers identifying and, if necessary, changing
the customer optimizers were the most actually valued  played any roles. people s understanding of what jobs en-
effective at their work, and all thought These findings reveal the origins of tail. The practical challenge for HR de-
that the sequential optimizers were the many failures in corporate recruitment partments, however, is figuring out just
least capable. But the reasons given for and training. If it s this hard for a small what understanding-based recruitment
these assessments differed, depending group of technical people to agree on and training will actually involve.
on how an individual defined the job. what makes them successful, how can
Jörgen Sandberg is a senior lecturer at the
When I asked sequential optimizers, we expect HR professionals to do any
University of Queensland s Graduate School
for instance, why they thought the cus- better, especially for jobs involving
of Management in Brisbane, Australia. He
tomer optimizers were so good, they less repetitive and routine tasks? And
can be reached at [e-mail].
explained it in terms of their own un- if people don t recognize or value the
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