EVOLUTION OF COMPETENCE OVER TIME

One of the most common misconceptions concerning competence is that the goal is to hold the highest competence possible and that an individual’s competence should constantly increase as their career progresses. This is complete fallacy. The goal is to hold the appropriate competence for whatever role is being played. As an individual’s career progresses, their role will, quite naturally, evolve. For example, someone may start their career as a technician and then move into a more senior technical role, then progress (or regress) to management, before ending up at board level in an organisation. The point here is that the competence for that person is not increasing all the time, but the role that they play is changing and, hence, the set of competencies that define their competence will change over time. It is important that the person holds the right competence for each role at each point in their career. This phenomenon will be referred to as ‘competence evolution’ and will become very important when competency profiles are discussed later in this book.