The Competent Company - Third Edition

By Anders Hemre

Competent companies are good at what they do. But it's when knowledge challenges generally held beliefs and when expertise challenges authority, that companies are put to the test – whether they can learn and change or whether they cannot.
The Competent Company provides a series of insights about professional competence, knowledge and expertise as well as organizational learning, knowledge management and mission delivery.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Geoffrey B. Dahl & Associates Inc.
• Release date: Oct 14, 2018
• ISBN: 9781988375120

Book preview

Being competent. And showing it

The competence of an organization, like that of an individual, is demonstrated by performance. It can therefore truly be determined only by comparison with other similar organizations or individuals.

Furthermore, the performance of an organization comes not only from the experience, knowledge and skills of its people, but also from components such as machinery, processes, methods and tools as well as from engagement, management and leadership.

Competence is thus a complex and dynamic capability that can only be observed in action.

Strictly speaking, an organization cannot be competent. It can only show competence.

Obviously, organizational competence must rely on individual competence but also requires conditions, which allow and encourage people to perform. Organizations in which fear dominates the psychological landscape, where behavior is strongly politically driven or where efficiency always trumps creativity are not very likely to demonstrate a sustained superior performance.

Also, an organization focusing on e.g. developing new technologies in a turbulent business environment should not be judged by the same criteria as one that is involved in the continual improvement of an existing product line in a more stable business environment.

An organization should certainly be aware of its own weaknesses and make effort to improve. In order to excel it must, however, primarily draw on its strengths. At any rate, the competence of an organization should be viewed as a demonstrated capability, which can be interpreted into expected performance.

Competence is therefore also a forward looking capability and a major part of an organization’s overall value proposition.

Incompetence: the failure to perform

No doubt, individual competence is a desirable quality. Competence alone, however, does not create careers. Likability, personal relationships, timing, availability and other factors play important roles as well.

Through organizational and individual behavior, performance deficits may become inadvertently engineered into business processes and projects. Bounded rationality is a well known example where e.g. the lack of time, knowledge or information may limit one’s cognitive capacity.

As a result, incompetence may show itself in bad decisions, poor judgment and errors in execution.

"Like competence,

incompetence has consequence."

Individual and organizational ineptness may also form due to e.g. market and industry developments, the introduction of new technologies and workforce attrition.

Poor performance could even occur by design in conjunction with re-organizations, divestitures, outsourcing etc. In such circumstances, companies can become temporarily incompetent until knowledge acquisition, learning and practice creates new and relevant competence.

Real incompetence though is the consistent failure to perform — while expected to do so — in a task or profession.

Most people — and organizations — like to be seen as competent. Occasional demonstrations of incompetence could always be explained away by circumstances beyond control. On the other hand, success due to favorable circumstances, the action of others or plain luck can always be claimed as a demonstration of competence.

Lund University professor Mats Alvesson has pointed to the propagation of functional stupidity as a cause of incompetent behavior: "Functional stupidity refers to an absence of reflexivity, a refusal to use intellectual capacities in other than myopic ways, and avoidance of