We believe that Career Path design and Role and Competency Definition and Profiling are necessarily linked. For a “career path” to exist in an organisation, the growth opportunities need to be defined and publicised.
It is the responsibility of each individual to plan and seek out their career journey. And, it is the responsibility of the organisation to show what opportunities exist within the organisation. Lack of career opportunities is the no 1 reason that good people leave organisations today.
Just as we learnt ourselves, and we watch our children develop – perambulatory skills develop from crawl to walk to run. And, so it is with most skills and competencies. There is generally an “entry” level, a “practising” level, and an “advanced” level of competency. For effective career opportunity definition, each of these needs to be defined, whether or not there are currently incumbents in place.
Careers can no longer be hierarchical, as the job-based organisation dictates. We must enable better ways of creating lateral careers, and these are based on defining and measuring a range of roles and competencies that are required to fill the multiple capabilities needed in the organisation. And then, enable and empower people to grow in their chosen pattern of skills development.
In today’s workplace, people play more than one role – especially in Agile teams. With a Role-based Organisation structure, it not only makes the organisation more flexible – more reconfigurable, but it also allows people to grow into Roles, rather than into Jobs. And, it allows maximum flexibility when “reconfiguring” for any specific purpose, and growing skills for the future.
The Role-based structure is more like a spiderweb, with people able to develop in different roles across the entire spiderweb. In this diagram the Minimum Viable Roles (MVR) are shown and the Cs refer to the Competencies needed for that MVR.
To learn more about creating a flexible career path that enables people growth and dual-career pathing in any organisation, complete the form below and we will be in touch directly. Alternative, you can set an appointment to discuss with us.
See also Designing Reconfigurable Organisations and Work, Role and Competency Definition and Profiling.