Developing Your Group s Skills Base

Do your direct reports have the skills and knowledge they need to perform your group s core processes superbly ”and thus to support the strategy you have identified? If not, the entire fragile architecture of your group could fall apart. A skills base comprises these four types of knowledge:

Individual expertise: Gained through training, education, and experience
Relational knowledge: An understanding of how to work together to integrate individual knowledge to achieve specified goals
Embedded knowledge: The core technologies on which your group s and performance depend, such as customer databases or R&D technologies
Meta-knowledge: The awareness of where to go to get critical information; for example, through external affiliations such as research institutions and technology partners

Identifying Gaps and Resources

The overarching goal of assessing your group s capabilities is to identify (1) critical gaps between needed and existing skills and knowledge and (2) underutilized resources such as partially exploited technologies and squandered expertise. Closing gaps and making better use of underutilized resources can produce enormous gains in performance and productivity.

To identify skills and knowledge gaps, first revisit your strategy and the core processes you identified. Ask yourself what mix of the four types of knowledge is needed to support your group s core processes. Treat this as a visioning exercise in which you imagine the ideal knowledge mix. Then assess your group s existing skills, knowledge, and technologies. What gaps do you see? Which of them can be repaired quickly and which will take more time?

To identify underutilized resources, search for individuals or groups in your unit who have performed much better than average. What has enabled them to do so? Do they enjoy resources (technologies, methods , materials, and support from key people) that could be exported to the rest of your unit? Have promising product ideas been sitting on the shelf because of lack of interest or investment? Could existing production resources be adapted to serve new sets of customers?