Most companies recognize that investing in people drives performance. Yet many small and mid-sized organizations struggle to create training programs that deliver real performance gains. We suggest three key steps to create a structured approach to building competence while giving everyone clarity on their development journey. This systematic approach will provide visibility on the development journey for everyone and enable deliberate skills development that translate into performance gains.
We suggest the following three steps:
- Creating your skill-map: Determining which skills are needed and by whom - the competencies to be mastered by which roles.
- Assessing the current state: Evaluating current capabilities and identifying gaps and next areas of development at the personal level.
- Developing people: Executing targeted interventions to close gaps and set up programs to support employees along their development journey.
Creating your skill-map
Start by building a map of required skills across your organization.
First, list essential skills: Start by listing the essential skills your organization needs. Look at your business processes - they often reveal which skills are truly necessary for your operations. You can then organize these skills into categories such as organizational, technical, managerial, ... capabilities. This organization helps create a comprehensive skill map tailored specifically to your business needs.
Next, define the key roles in your organization. If you run a quite uniform business like a consulting firm or investment company, hierarchical levels often work well as role definitions. However, for more diverse organizations, you'll need to map roles based on both your organizational structure and process flows. This ensures you capture all essential positions and their unique requirements.
Finally, match the required skills to each role by creating a comprehensive skills-roles matrix. For each role, classify which skills are mandatory and which are nice-to-have. Alternatively, you can define skill levels more precisely using basic, intermediate, and proficient categories. This detailed mapping helps clarify expectations and creates clear development pathways for each position to the next.
Assessing the current state
With your skills framework in place, team leaders can assess their team members' current capabilities. This evaluation serves two crucial purposes: it helps identify skill gaps and defines clear next steps for development. Based on these insights, leaders can create personalized development plans that guide each team member's growth journey.
Developing people
Finally, build these capabilities through a blended learning approach. One proven framework is the 70-20-10 model, where learning happens through hands-on experience (70%), mentoring and coaching (20%), and formal training (10%). This mix of practical work, guided support, and structured learning helps ensure that skill development sticks and delivers real value for both your people and your business.