Know your business competencies and build your strengths!

Competencies: Which ones do you need?

 Strategic perspective, customer focus (and understanding the customer), ability to spot trends and work on them, engage your team and commit them to results, be willing to take calculated risks and also gather deep knowledge and expertise that is crucial to your sector. These are competencies! Core competencies are the main strengths or strategic advantages of a business, including the combination of pooled knowledge and technical capacities that allow a business to be competitive in the marketplace.
 In a global market you and I have to enlarge our competence to suit our environment. Jack Zenger of Forbes makes this clear in his "

6 Competencies Global Leaders Need to Succeed". Our skills and competencies need to be maximized such that we have access to a wide variety of markets, thereby competing effectively in what we do. That is why we have to do what it takes to update our skills and examine the trends in our sectors consistently so that we are not left behind in the scheme of thing.  The question that should be always on our minds is: What can I do to get better?
Enlarging and enhancing our skills is not end in its self, its a mean to a very profitable end.  Significant competencies should make a significant contribution to the perceived customer benefits of a product or service. So if we are polishing or improving our skills the process ought to have a bearing on the product or service that our organization provides.
When our skills are up to date and cutting edge its difficult for the competition to imitate or gain a competitive advantage over our person or organization. Mark my words in every market where there is competition someone is trying to do another person over to gain prominence and advantages. If competition remains cut throat and similar groups continue to chase the existing customers then we have to build competence as well as organizational capability.
From within an organization, capability is built by selection of specialized and relevant talent, product development, extensive investment in machinery(where its relevant) and creation of profitable relationships.  Every organization seeks to strengthen its capability through the configuration of resources that are necessary for its competitiveness, development of systems,processes and structures which would encourage development.
Even though competencies are not perfect nor do they last forever, there are requirements for the effective management of capability:
1. Identify the distinctive competencies of your organization or brand. See how they can be highlighted and used to your advantage.
2. Invest in processes and systems that would enable you to over come decline or depreciation of distinctive competencies. Do what you can to retain the edge you have over other organizations by streamlining activity within your organization.
3. Keep developing and improving where possible, remember complacence leads to failure.
4. Ensure that your distinguish competence is exploited to the maximum.