Promoting employees' competence

Kim Jong-nam

For the past three or four months, I have been providing consultation for an organization to help them identify what core competencies its sales managers need to have and what their priorities should be in order to support their organization’s vision and strategy. During the consultation process, I have had to make hypotheses, and I was able to test them out during the last two days of the workshop that I conducted with the sales managers. This workshop was meaningful because many sales organizations are not interested in identifying competencies for their sales managers, even though they do that for their other managers. Some sales organizations tend to focus on sales results as the sole competency and barometer for their sales managers, and the only criterion with which to decide whether they will develop their managers further. However, this excessive emphasis on sales tends to lead to a vicious circle, as Chris Argyris, an American organizational theorist, has described in his work. This circle happens because the organization’s laser focus on sales will deflate the managers’ appetites for growth; this lack of growth causes low productivity, which increases the company’s emphasis on sales, thus beginning the circle all over again. In the end, both the organization and the sales managers lose out because neither of them is truly supporting the other.

This phenomenon is serious these days due to several factors, such as an economic slowdown, which leads to corporations having only short-term perspectives, and drastic environmental changes including unprecedented social, economic, and technological shifts. Thus, many organizations are now losing their enthusiasm for strengthening their long-term organizational or employee competencies. This negative organizational approach has the adverse effect of not motivating employees and letting them lose their initiative. What is worrisome is that when this vicious circle continues, the sense of unity between an organization and its employees will fade, the loyalty and engagement of its employees will disappear, and the organization’s ability to carry out its strategy will be weakened. For this reason, how organizations view and approach their employees is key to the satisfaction of their stakeholders, including customers. This is why it is unwise to be interested only in immediate sales results.

There is no growth for either an organization or a person without increasing competencies. If you are not interested in figuring out which part of your body you would like to strengthen, how will you choose which exercises to do? This is exactly so in organizations. There are no excuses for any organization. If an organization wants to grow in future, they need to start working on a detailed implementation plan right now. Short-sightedness in organizations is dangerous for long-term growth and sustainability, because focusing on short-term profits may make the long-term perspective unclear. Thus, organizations should acknowledge that long-term vision and short-term strategy are both instrumental in becoming successful.

There is a deep connection between employees and organizations, and without employees’ growth, there is no organizational growth. Given this, I think organizations should try looking deeply at what will help them remain robust in times of uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity they are dreading. How will they meet these challenges? Cutting management expenses? Introducing new technology temporarily? Harnessing a new marketing toolkit? These are all helpful, but the best defense is people, their people. To this end, I would like senior leaders of organizations to think about the three points below, which address why short-term profit should not take precedence over long-term sustainability.

First, just as it takes time for trees to grow, it takes time for employees to grow and play a primary role in leading their organizations. Employee competencies are not built in a day, so having a long-term vision for and support of employees is crucial. Second, if an organization and its employees do not envision, interpret and define their future together, the organization’s overall, comprehensive competency will never become stronger. Third, in order for leaders to become true leaders, they should know how to help their employees become successful. Just asking their employees to fix their shortcomings will not help the organization prepare for the future effectively, but growing competencies will.

Since our economy has grown a lot over the past few decades, it is striking how few truly great Korean companies there are ― the ones that are highlighted as long-term success models. Long-term quality trumps short-term quantity in managing an organization, and sales organizations can find that long-term quality by creating a competency-centric culture. When I finished the workshop today, one sales manager told me that this is the first time he realized that his organization and he are not totally different entities but rather very intensely connected. I hope many sales organizations begin to realize their employees are the secret ingredient to building a robust future.

Kim Jong-nam is the founding CEO of META (www.imeta.co.kr) and the author of two books, Organizations without Meetings and Breaking the Silent Rules.