Back of a bus in Aachen
In a prior post, Reflections from Aachen, I asked “What do you think? Should I begin using competenz as shorthand for gaining the ability to get things done?” Several people chimed in with helpful comments and this morning I received an email from a Norwegian colleague from the Aachen sessions that helped broaden my perspective.
A Norwegian project on Competence Reform focuses on what’s needed for the workplace and for society as a whole.
Charlemagne, “the first European”
My work hasn’t really looked at corporate learning from this perspective. I have concentrated on what a business can do to improve the performance of its people, with almost no regard for the needs of society. This is in part a reflection of the differences in the role of government in the U.S. and in Europe, particularly Scandanavia. On this side of the Atlantic, this is an oxymoron: “Hi, I’m from the government and I am here to help you.”
Participants from all the Nordic countries participated in a Think Tank on Future Competencies in 2006 to investigate:
What will Nordic working life and society look like in the future? What competencies will adult individuals need to develop in order to function? Through what systems and organisations can this competence be developed? How can Nordic culture be the basis for an effective policy?
They concluded that:
In the competence society it will not be enough to “know about” something; “the ability to perform” is a decisive factor in personal success. Personal competence and being capable of performing a job in a way that generates added value are factors which make the individual an attractive job candidate. This requires, firstly, an understanding of the need to constantly learn new things and, secondly, the prerequisites for doing this.
We need to deepen our understanding of the concept of competence and to discern more clearly between developing competence and increasing knowledge. The think tank has based its work on the definition that competence means the capability and resolve to perform a task by using certain knowledge and abilities. If this is to be the basis for the competence concept, competence development has to take place in a number of fields and include capability, resolve, knowledge and abilities.
As the individual and individual development is increasingly becoming the focal point of other competencies, the think tank has arrived at the following categories of competence:
Professional competence is the competence needed for performing a task in a work situation in a way that creates added value in relation to the work that is being carried out.
Social competence
comprises the ability to communicate and interact with people in different contexts through, for instance, language, artistic expression, movement, mathematics, or technical tools.
Personal competence, whose core consists of self-knowledge, forms the basis for the development of social competence.The aim of categorising competencies is to make it easier to differentiate and discern between various types of competencies and thus show how the three categories interact and support each other. Understanding competence, how it is acquired, and what competence categories form the essential basis for a better future, helps to improve the planning of adult education.
The subtitle to the unbook is “Getting Things Done in Organizations.” I think I’ll keep it.
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