• Have you identified the skills/competencies needed in your organization to ensure a competitive advantage?
  
  
• Are those skills/competencies clearly defined so there is a mutual understanding of their meaning throughout all aspects of your talent management initiative?
  
  
• Are they defined in a manner that identifies specific levels of proficiency performance?

For example, if you cannot answer “yes” to the questions above you may be surprised when you try to identify individuals with good decision making skills/competencies and you get a variety of individuals, none of which meet your criteria of what “decision making” means.  Or when identifying the concept of good, finding that your criteria for good, could be another’s idea of horrible or another’s idea of excellent. 

Clear performance and proficiency criteria are crucial to ensure a clear and consistent communication process throughout all of your talent management process – i.e., recruitment, interviewing, succession planning, career pathing, performance management, developmental activities, etc.

This tool will illustrate the process.