Building Technical Capability the Right Way
Akshay Sharma
Consultant,
Aon Hewitt
In the competitive business landscape in which organizations across industries are finding themselves, building and systematically sustaining an edge in the market is one of the biggest challenges facing leadership teams across the world. This, combined with the pace at which technological developments are being introduced, has made it plainly clear that it is critical for organizations intentionally and systematically to build their organizational capability - their intangible assets like technical excellence, leadership capability and innovation
% of Respondents,1 by Office Location
Where Capability2 Falls on Organizations' Strategic Agendas
1Respondents who answered among the top 10 priorities, not a priority, and don't know are not shown.
2Includes both institutional and individual capabilities.
3Includes Latin America.
A recent survey conducted by McKinsey and Company unsurprisingly showed that of the ~1,500 respondents globally, half say that capability building falls on the organization's strategic agenda. Closer to home, in India, the survey found that this is true for about 53% of the respondents, while more than 11% of the responding organizations actually consider 'capability building' as their top strategic priority. While organizations clearly understand and value the importance of organizational capability building, the grey spot in the minds of CEOs and CHROs pertains to introducing the intervention with an approach that yields measurable business outcomes and tangible results. Centers of Excellence (COEs) and design/project teams of these interventions often begin execution without identifying the critical drivers that are key to the intervention's success. Thus, these interventions end at merely reorganizing the existing training and development infrastructure without having a tangible impact on either the capability of an individual employee or that of the organization.
What Needs to Change: Identifying the Critical Drivers
Business Becomes the Owner
Traditionally, the responsibility of organizational capability building has been shouldered by the human resource function. The first radical change that has become imperative for organizations to make is to build greater ownership from the business, especially from technical functions like R&D, operations and sales and marketing. While the HR function is strongly suited to determine, design and deploy leadership development interventions required by the organization, building technical capability must be spearheaded by technical functions and in turn facilitated by HR. Making this radical shift in thought and subsequent action not only emphasizes the commitment that the business has to technical excellence and capability building, but it also drives alignment with the on-ground technical knowledge and skill requirements of the various business divisions/functions.
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