3D Capabilities Profile

3D Capabilities Profile is a structured framework for comprehensively capturing or profiling one's capabilities. Using this, we can profile our capabilities, assessment of which is the first step towards career development. Similarly, employers or organizations would be able to use the framework to profile the capabilities of its employees to focus its development effort.

The highlights of the 3D Capabilities Profile:

1. Comprehensiveness: It is applicable to individuals in any function or industry and covers all areas one's talent, professional and otherwise.

2. Structured: It takes one from a macro to a micro level in a step-by-step manner.

3. Universal: It is applicable to individuals across geographies and levels in organizations.

The profiling involves two dimensions:

1. The capabilities we possess and

2. The proficiency in the capabilities

(Batting maybe one's capability; the related aspect or proficiency would mean how well one bats.)

Our 3D Capabilities profile would therefore cover both these aspects i.e. profile the capabilities or skills we possess and the proficiency levels in these skills or capabilities.

Career development or employee development would mean either/and:

1. Acquiring new capabilities or skills

2. Improving our proficiency levels in the capabilities or skills

Structure for capturing capabilities

1. Function

Example: HR, Arts, Software Development, Accounts and Sales etc.

2. Industry

Example: Financial Services, Software, Automotive, Oil & Gas etc.

3. Roles

Five broad clusters of roles that anchor around one key element or core competence. A position in an organization maybe a combination of these five roles in varied degrees. From each of these roles, different kinds of deliverables are expected.

Example:

? Operations

? Manual or low skills individual contributor

? Knowledge-centric or high skills individual contributor

? People influencer

? Business manager

4. Functional specialization

Areas within the function-specializations that the function provides. A simple way to understand specialization is to take the case of doctors. We have doctors specializing in different areas of medicine, such as orthopaedics, dentistry, surgery etc.

Example:

Software - Applications development, Mainframe, Testing etc.

HR - Recruitment, Compensation & Benefits, Training & Development etc.

5. Functional skills

Example:

Programming languages - C, C++, Java, etc.

HRIS - SAP, Peoplesoft,

Finance & Accounts - Financial Accounting, Laws such as Companies Act, Auditing etc.

6. Behavioral/Soft skills Typically enables performance in one's role

Example: Communication, Delegation, Team management, Interpersonal skills etc.

7. Business/Managerial skills Typically enables performance in one's role

Example: Operations management, Marketing, Information Systems, Organizational change etc.

8. Avocational skills (Hobbies and interests) Our interest areas, not necessarily related to our profession

Example: Yoga, Languages, Sports, Music etc.

3D Capabilities Profiler is a menu-driven tool that helps us capture our capabilities and skills. It is pre-loaded with skills in different functions and specializations, and so helps us identify the skills or capabilities we have with little effort.

We need to understand what roles mean in detail. We will discuss that later in this document.

Proficiencies

Proficiency is defined as the ability to handle a certain level of complexity.

Complexity, in turn, depends on:

1. The amount of information to be processed

2. Number of variables

3. Interdependency of variables

4. Prior information available

The complexity can be viewed for each of the roles, for example

? Number of people to be managed

? Area covered under a salesman

? Number of products or service lines

? Intricacy of a subject matter

? Tolerance of error

? Mix of technologies to be applied

? How dynamically the technology or subject is changing

We define proficiencies at three levels (Level 1, Level 2 and Level 3)

A simple way to understand the different levels would be to know the flair in the subject area, complexity of problems that we can solve, ability to create things with the subject or skill.

When we say that I am able to converse with some difficulty in a particular language, I am at Level 1. In Level 2 of proficiency, I am able to converse with ease making little or no mistakes. In Level 3, I am able to converse in imaginative ways.

In the case of roles, we can look at Levels of proficiency differently. One would typically move up proficiency levels with practice and experience at some complexity level. After we reach a high proficiency level of a certain complexity level, we move on to a low proficiency level of the next complexity level.

The aim is, therefore, to move up the proficiency as well as the order of complexity.

From a role perspective, the proficiency levels have to indicate the complexity level.

For example, suppose a salesperson has reached a proficiency level of three (high) in his current role, which is managing his territory. Then he needs to be assigned to a higher level of complexity (say, given the responsibility of the sales of a region), where he may actually move to level 1 proficiency.

Roles

Roles essentially mean how we deliver value in creating a product or service-how we use our capabilities and aptitude.

Functional specializations are the focus or a unique cluster of knowledge and skills, within a particular frame.

People generally perform five roles regardless of whether they work for organizations or independently. These five roles are universal and are good indicators of how we align our aptitude to how we create value.

Let us look at these five roles:

1. Operations

2. Manual or low skills individual contributor

3. Knowledge-centric or high skills individual contributor

4. People influencer

5. Business manager

Operations:

1. Involves coordination with different functions, including those outside our function (A production manager, for example, needs to coordinate with finance, purchase, R&D and HR)

2. Involves following a regimen, process, series of activities (Examples: a production cycle, sales process, customer support process)

3. Involves managing people, allocating tasks, ensuring productivity

4. Involves negotiating for resources-time, material, money

5. Involves troubleshooting in the process and making improvements (Example: plant breakdown, sudden change in frequency, leakages in the pipeline, increase in defects)

Individual Doer:

1. Involves the complete work of an individual or (only an individual's efforts (Examples: carpentry, programming, fitting, drawing)

2. Involves applying skills in analyzing problems and identifying solutions or creating something

3. Involves taking instructions from others and following the instructions

4. May involve dealing with the end user directly, understanding their requirements, and meeting them

Knowledge provider:

1. Involves good understanding of a particular subject or knowledge area

2. Involves expert or specialist problem-solving using our knowledge and advising (Examples: an Tax counsellor analyzing my income, applying tax regulations, and advising me on the tax savings; an Urban Transportation specialist guiding city planners on designing the right kind of transportation system for the city)

3. Involves advocacy - giving advice and guidance (an insurance domain expert advises the insurance application development team, a marriage counselor counsels a couple)

4. Involves taking decisions independently and owning those decisions

5. May involve dealing with the end user directly (in the case of a Doctor it does; in the case of a Urban Transportation specialist, it does not)

Influencing others:

1. Involves selling products or services or ideas to others (Example: soaps, healthcare plan, insurance policies)

2. Involves understanding the behaviour of people (could be based on age, geography, culture, earnings, education and so on)

3. Involves expanding network and connecting with people

4. Involves negotiations (could be prices, product or service options, trade-offs)

5. Involves comfort in managing or working with emotions of people (some refuse to take up managerial positions saying that they are not comfortable in dealing with other people's emotions)

Business management:

1. Involves managing a business unit, responsible for its financial performance (Examples: revenue, P&L, growth rates)

2. Involves taking risks on investments (Examples: make or buy, should we invest now or later, should we set up a new office in a different city or not)

3. Involves bringing people of different functions together to create value

4. Involves spotting and building on opportunities for business enhancement

Proficiencies for the five roles

Proficiency is our ability to handle a certain level of complexity. The measure of complexity varies for different roles. Lets us look at some of the examples of the indicators of complexity or measures we use for proficiency in each of the five roles.

Operations:

1. Size of the operations (number of people managed, size of the budget, spread of operations)

2. Sensitivity of the operations (tolerance for error, speed at which decisions have to be taken, the impact of decisions)

3. Criticality of the operations (financial value, strategic value, life cycle of the operations)

Low skill individual contributor:

1. Nature of skills (availability of the skill, competition)

2. Working conditions (where the skills need to be deployed and when)

3. Contextual variety (different contexts in which the knowledge is deployed)

High skills individual contributor:

1. Knowledge area (level of specialization, exclusivity, pace of changes within the knowledge area)

2. Contextual variety (different contexts in which the knowledge is deployed)

Influencing:

1. Nature of product or services (niche market segment or product/service/idea, competition, people's awareness about it)

2. Diversity of the audience (demography, culture, geography)

3. Value of the product or service or idea (criticality, sensitivity, financial or non-financial value)

Business management

1. Financial value or the Net worth of business (size, growth, number of people, spread)

2. Nature of product or services (competition, market opportunities, process, and technology)

3. Organization complexity (demography of people in the organization, functions, skills, geography)

If you are an individual and would like to profile your skills using 3D Capabilities Profile, please visit trainingorbit.com/Profiles/CreateLearnerProfile trainingorbit.com/Profiles/CreateLearnerProfile If you are a HR or business leader and would like to profile skills of your employees, please visit trainingorbit.com/Home/SkillsInventory trainingorbit.com/Home/SkillsInventory