This document provides guidance on designing a skill and competency management program. It discusses key design decisions around job architecture, competency modeling, and integration with other systems. The document recommends: beginning with 1-3 use cases; deciding on one or multiple competency models, a top-down or bottom-up approach, and a big bang or successive rollout strategy; designing job architecture with common and specialized components; and identifying integration points across HR systems. It also offers best practices for adoption such as seeding profiles and reporting on trends. The goal is to build capabilities for adaptation, efficiency, and resilience through an effective skill management program.

1. karen@ibbaka.com
steven@ibbaka.com
Building
Capability
Management

2. Design Decision Framework
Key designs in job architecture and competency modeling
● Decision structuring
● Mapping Jobs - Roles - Skills
● Job rationalization
● Combining models
karen@ibbaka.com
steven@ibbaka.com
June 1, 2020

3. CONTEXT
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● Skill and competency management has emerged as a required function for organizations struggling to
adapt to new circumstances
● A well designed skill and management program can square the circle of resilience - efficiency -
adaptation, allowing organizations to shift gears from one mode to another
● The impact can be transformational
○ Rapid development of the new capabilities need to deliver new categories and business models
○ Internal mobility and a more engaged workforce
○ Skill-based teams that deliver more successful projects
● Effective implementation of a skill and competency management program requires a set of design
decisions, making decisions in the right order is critical to success
○ Cascading choices to frame the decisions
○ Use case prioritization to stay focussed
○ The big three design decisions
■ One competency model or many
■ Roll out in a big bang or successive waves
■ Begin with a top down or bottom up approach (eventually you will need both)

4. CASCADING CHOICES FOR SKILL AND COMPETENCY MANAGEMENT
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Winning Aspirations
Where to Play
How to Win
Capabilities
Systems
Prepare for the Future
Adaptation - Resilience - Efficiency
New capabilities
Internal Staff
Extended Talent Network and Partners
Recruiting
Team Building
Build a competency model
Focus on bottom up skill identification
Map skills to learning resources
Competency Model Design
Community Building
Skill Curation
Learning Resource Management
Skill and Competency Management System
Integrations
This an application of Roger Martin’s Cascading
Choices to Skill and Competency Management.
See his book with A.G. Lafley.

5. KEY BUSINESS QUESTIONS
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Leaders need to be able to answer key business questions about skills in their organization
● What skills are available to our organization?
● How are they being applied?
● Do we have the skills we need to meet today’s goals?
● Will we have the skills we need to meet tomorrow’s goals?
● Are there hidden pockets of potential we can deploy?
● Who are the critical people on our team?
● What skills are driving high performance?
➔ Ibbaka Talent answers these questions

6. A STANDARD APPROACH TO CASCADING CHOICES AND KEY DESIGN DECISIONS
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1. Set goals - frame using the Cascading Choice Model for skill and competency leadership.
2. Choose 1-3 use cases to focus on for the initial roll out.
3. Make the three big framing decisions
a. One competency model or many
b. Roll out in a big bang or successive waves
c. Begin with a top down or bottom up approach (eventually you will need both)
4. Design the Job Architecture and Competency Model(s)
a. Components (Job - Role - Values - Behaviors - Tasks - Skills - Resources and so on)
b. Connections (how the components connect)
c. Structure - map to the organizational model
d. Paths - design paths from one Job or Role to another
5. Decide on the approach to assessment
a. How will assessments be used
b. Who will assess
c. What is the assessment system

7. A STANDARD APPROACH TO CASCADING CHOICES AND KEY DESIGN DECISIONS
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6. Plan application integrations
a. What data needs to be shared
b. On which systems
c. How often
d. What data exchange mechanisms are available
e. Design data mappings
f. What are the systems of record
g. Where are the security and privacy risks
7. Configure the skill and competency management platform
a. Category systems
b. Assessment approach
c. Security and privacy rules
8. Plan the roll out
a. Recruit leaders and influencers
b. Develop key messages

8. A STANDARD APPROACH TO CASCADING CHOICES AND KEY DESIGN DECISIONS
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8. Plan the roll out
a. Recruit leaders and influencers
b. Develop key messages
c. Plan communication cadence
d. Make sure the plan communicates value and outcomes to all key stakeholders (including users)
9. Support adoption
a. Make sure all skill profiles have some skills suggested
b. Help leaders and influencers develop their profiles
c. Focus on one piece of functionality at a time
d. Report on use, impact and value delivery
10. Adapt and evolve
a.

9. Develop new capabilities
Personalize learning and
development experiences
Enable self-directed
career growth
Build cross functional
skill-based teams
• Model the new capability in a modular and dynamic way
• Use Open Competency Models to accelerate development
• Find the people with potential to develop the skills
• Identify skill gaps between an individual and the
organization’s model to target learning investments
• Support a full 70:20:10 approach to skill development
• Identify core and target skills
• Use continuous assessments as skills are applied in
different contexts
• Correlated investments to performance outcomes
• Design team skill needs
• Understand the complementary and connecting skills
• Search and combine people into skill-based teams
COMMON USE CASES
Skill and competency models can deliver on many business cases. To begin choose just a few to
focus on, preferably one, no more than three.
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10. Increase utilization
Improve employee
engagement
Build an extended talent
network
Enable internal mobility
• Leverage internal skills before hiring in
• Find hidden skills that are needed for projects
• Staff using skills rather than depending on relationships
• Empower employees with insight into their skills
• Support career aspirations
• Demonstrate a commitment to employee success
• See all of the skills available to you through partners and
gig economy workers
• Take rapid advantage of emerging opportunities by
leveraging your network
• Publicize available jobs across the company
• Match jobs and roles to skills
• Support cross functional teams
COMMON USE CASES
Use cases should support individual uses, teams and company level objectives.
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11. FRAMING CRITICAL DECISIONS
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Components of a Job
(Roles - Common - Specializations)
One or many
competency models
Top down and bottom up
Roll out strategy
(Big Bang or Successive Waves)
Integration Points
Job architecture and competencies need to map to each other
Easier to integrate top down and bottom up approaches
with smaller models
Big Bang - emphasis is on Top Down Approach
Successive Waves - allows for ore adaptation during roll out
In designing the job architecture and
competency model map to systems of
record and data integrations

12. EVALUATING CRITICAL DECISIONS - COMPONENTS
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Components of a Job
(Roles - Common - Specializations)
One or many
competency models
Top down and bottom up
Roll out strategy
(Big Bang or Successive Waves)
Integration Points
Key Considerations
Given the need to reduce the number of total jobs and to improve internal mobility
the following are important design considerations:
1. Identify what is common to all jobs
Values; Expected behaviors; Core knowledge)
2. Design an architecture that makes use of reusable components
In our experience the most powerful reusable components are
a. Roles (Jobs can be composed of roles)
b. Task Clusters (tasks that frequently come together)
c. Skill Clusters (use the concept of ‘associated skills’ and ‘parent skills’
to simplify Skill to Task and Skill to Role mapping
3. Allow for job specializations and local jobs
The general jobs can sometimes be too generic for specialized functions.
Different geographies may need customization.
Instead of creating new jobs for each circumstance, use job inheritance to
allow for customization while maintaining scalability and replicability
Associated Skills: Skills frequently used together by the same person for in a role or to perform a task
Parent Child Relations: Can be applied to any part of a model, allow for inheritance of properties from the general to
the specific or from the more abstract to the more concrete

13. EVALUATING CRITICAL DECISIONS - ONE OR MANY MODELS
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Components of a Job
(Roles - Common - Specializations)
One or many
competency models
Top down and bottom up
Roll out strategy
(Big Bang or Successive Waves)
Integration Points
One Model Multiple Models
+ - + -
Easier to maintain
consistency
Can apply model wide
rules
Can apply content
across models
Support cross functional
mobility
Takes a very large effort
to put in place
Governance is more
difficult as multiple
functions are involved
More difficult to adapt
In most companies new
models will spring up for
new business functions
or capabilities no matter
how tightly this is locked
down
Easier and faster to
develop and evolve
Can focus on the needs
of specific business
functions
Easier to import and use
external models from
open source projects,
industry groups or
consultants
Contradictions and
inconsistencies can
develop between the
different models
Model governance is
easier but managing
across models and
business functions can
be more difficult
Recombinant Competency Models: Ibbaka is developing the technology to manage
modular competency models where pieces can be shared and connected across multiple
models; at a minimum, require a common architecture across models

14. EVALUATING CRITICAL DECISIONS - TOP DOWN OR BOTTOM UP APPROACH
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Components of a Job
(Roles - Common - Specializations)
One or many
competency models
Top down and bottom up
Roll out strategy
(Big Bang or Successive Waves)
Integration Points
Top Down Bottom Up
+ - + -
Communicate an
organization wide view
Integrate with other
parts of the
organizational design
Apply formal structures
that make it easier to
scale and manage the
model
Governance is easier
Employees often feel
the model is being
imposed and does not
reflect their actual skills
or roles
Engagement is often
lower
Evolution of the model is
much slower
Use must be mandated
Rapidly captures the
actual skills being used
and how these map to
jobs, roles, tasks,
performance
Emergent skills are
seen early and can be
supported
Engagement is
generally higher and
their can be viral
adoption
Can become chaotic
and contradictory if not
well curated
Requires an ongoing
investment in curation
Can be difficult to align
with organization goals
and other parts of the
organizational design
Integrating top down and bottom up approaches: See next slide. One can accelerate
rollout and adoption by combining the two approaches and operating in parallel.

15. POSSIBLE ORDER OF WORK
Develop Skill Profiles
Import Existing Skill Libraries
Develop Competency Models
Seed Skill Profiles
(C.V.s and LinkedIn)
Understand Current Skills Frame Requirements
Integrate
Connect Skill Profiles to
Competency Models
Evaluate Bottom Up Skills for
Inclusion into Formal Models

16. EVALUATING CRITICAL DECISIONS - ROLL OUT STRATEGY
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Components of a Job
(Roles - Common - Specializations)
One or many
competency models
Top down and bottom up
Roll out strategy
(Big Bang or Successive Waves)
Integration Points
Big Bang Successive Waves
+ - + -
Shared model across
whole organization
Leadership can convey
a consistent message
across the whole
organization
Internal mobility
between different
business functions is
enable
Easier to build cross
functional teams
Large upfront
investment before value
is generated
Requires change
management at scale
Often leads to excessive
standardization and
over simplification
Model can be tailored to
target audience
Communication can be
tailored to target
audience
Much faster time to
value
Easier to implement the
parallel process on the
preceding slide
Does not fully realize
cross functional use
cases (for internal
mobility and cross
functional teas)
Requires additional
effort to keep models
aligned and current as
successive models are
implemented
Generally takes longer
to reach the whole
organization than the
Big Bang approach
Hybrid approach - Roll out organization wide components (Values, Expected Behaviors,
Core Knowledge and Skill Profiles in a Big Bang approach but Job-Role-Task models as
successive waves.

17. EVALUATING CRITICAL DECISIONS - INTEGRATION POINTS
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Components of a Job
(Roles - Common - Specializations)
One or many
competency models
Top down and bottom up
Roll out strategy
(Big Bang or Successive Waves)
Integration Points
Integration Points
1. Identify key applications in the HR - Talent - Learning - Performance -
Work Management ecosystem
2. Develop a data catalog for the types of data currently on each system (look
for duplications)
3. Look for mappings where by one data type can be transformed into
another.
a. Skills can be used to describe learning objects
b. Tasks can be mapped to skills
c. Job Descriptions can be transformed into learning paths
4. Define data privacy and data ownership rules
a. GDPR
b. German Work Councils
c. Align with company values and policies
5. Define integration styles
a. Extract Transform Load
b. API
c. Shared database access (or data lake)
d. Common database
6. Decide on system of record and data flows
a. What is the system of record for each data type
b. What order does data flow from one system to another

18. POSSIBLE INTEGRATION POINTS
Ibbaka is the system of record for skills, connecting the HR and Learning Ecosystems
System of Record for Skills
HRIS &
Talent Management
Applicant
Tracking System
Business Information
Systems
Learning
Management
System
Credentials
Learning
Resources
Roles to Learning Path
Jobs & Skills
Jobs & Skills
Individual Skills
Learning
Experience
Platform
Data for Analysis
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Professional
Services
Automation
Availability
Skills
Project
Management
Performance
Management
Task to
Skill Mapping
Skills
Performance Reviews

19. CHOICE ORDERING
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Top Down or
Bottom Up
One Model or
Multiple Models
Big Bang or
Successive Waves
Model
Architecture
Integration
Plan
Change
Management
Model
Architecture
Integration
Plan
Change
Management
Seed
Profiles
Design
Model(s)
Integrate
Evolve
and Adapt

20. BEST PRACTICES IN ADOPTION
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1. Have leaders and key influencers engaged with their own skill profiles
2. Seed profiles with skills to avoid the ‘cold start’ challenge
3. Accelerate development by importing existing libraries (third party, internal, open source)
4. Use skill libraries that reflect the actual work and language being used
5. Keep the skill libraries dynamic so that they evolve with use
6. Frequently report on key trends, to managers and to individual users
○ Trending skills
○ Growing areas of expertise
○ Skill clusters
○ Skills in demand

21. CONFIGURATION OPTIONS
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The following are easily configured as part of a standard subscription:
● Default privacy settings
● Skill categories
● Levels of expertise and descriptions of expertise
● Expertise feedback (self rating, manager rating, peer rating, expert rating, evidence rating)
● Organization architecture (business units, geographies, matrix reporting)

22. Contact us
c/o VentureLabs
Suite 1100, 555 West Hastings Street
Vancouver, BC Canada V6B 4N6
Steven Forth Karen Chiang
E: steven@ibbaka.com E: karen@ibbaka.com
T: +1 (604) 763 7397 T: +1 (415) 799 8326
W: ibbaka.com
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23. Additional
Information

24. Ibbaka Talent Architecture
We extract skill data from
multiple applications,
documents and social
interactions, recommending
additional and potential
skills and represents this
data in the Skill Graph. Skills,
roles, projects and people
are shown in the Skill Map,
which is easy to search and
can be used to build skill-
based teams.
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25. Ibbaka Talent Skill Graph
The Ibbaka Talent AI is able
to infer real and potential
skills from this graph.
By comparing skill
requirements for roles and
projects skill gaps can be
found.
Jobs Roles Behaviors Skills Learning Resources Credentials
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26. Configurable Competency Models
• Design and configure a competency
model that meets your unique needs
• Connect competency models to
profiles and see who has the required
skills or where skill gaps exist
• Add learning resources to help build
new capabilities
• Connect skills and competencies
across your HR ecosystem
Models Jobs Behaviors Skills Learning Resources Credentials
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27. Open Competency Models
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Competency models shared under
a Creative Commons license.
Can be downloaded for use
independent of Ibbaka.
Evolve based on community input
and skills actually being used.
Validated through workshops and
by partners.
On the Ibbaka platform they can be
combined and customized.
In 2020 1H
● Customer Success
● Design Thinking
● Pricing Expertise
● Adaptation to Climate Change

28. SCREENSHOT - PERSONAL PROFILE
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29. SCREENSHOT - TEAM PROFILE
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Screen shots that reinforce story told in first conversation

30. SCREENSHOT - TEAM BUILDING
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31. SCREENSHOT - COMPETENCY MODELING
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32. SCREENSHOT - CONNECTING A JOB TO A SKILL PROFILE
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