The Competency Toolkit Volume 1 of a 2 Volume Set

The Competency Toolkit (Volume I) is a comprehensive, ready-to-use resource for HR professionals, performance technologists, and consultants who need to identify the underlying characteristics that drive successful and exemplary job performance. Rather than paying costly external consultants or buying generic competency dictionaries, readers get a proven, sequenced methodology—complete with briefing packages, worksheets, competency menus, card-sort tools, and survey techniques—for gaining leadership buy-in and constructing valid competency models job by job. Grounded in decades of combined field experience by David Dubois and William Rothwell, the Toolkit teaches that competencies are the tools workers use to produce expected outputs, and that studying exemplary performers lets organizations 'raise the performance bar' for everyone. It emphasizes practical realities: remove performance roadblocks first, use a consistent vocabulary, link everything to strategic objectives, and secure sponsor endorsement at every step. The result is a cost-effective, quality-conscious pathway from organizational support through model construction, assessment, and individual development planning.

What it argues

A framework linking organizational design levers (leadership support, performance diagnosis, competency identification, model construction) and contextual conditions to psychological and behavioral states (role clarity, empowerment, competency acquisition) that in turn drive individual and organizational performance outcomes, with performance roadblocks acting as a moderating condition.

Key ideas it contributes

• Leadership and Sponsor Support — The endorsement, resourcing, and sustained commitment of senior executives, a project sponsor, and a steering committee to competency-based initiatives.
• Performance Diagnosis and Roadblock Removal — The process of analyzing workplace conditions to separate know-how gaps from environmental roadblocks and prompting management to remove the latter.
• Competency Identification — The research process of determining the outputs, tasks, and underlying technical and personal-functioning competencies used by successful and exemplary workers.
• Competency Model Validity and Reliability — The accuracy (validity) and stability over time (reliability) with which a competency model portrays job performance elements appropriate to its intended use.
• Strategic Linkage of Competencies — The explicit alignment of competency work with the organization's prioritized strategic business objectives and the key jobs driving them.
• Worker Role and Expectation Clarity — Workers' clear understanding of expected tasks, outputs, quality standards, and the relative importance of competencies.
• Empowerment and Trust — Workers' perception of being trusted and empowered as a result of receiving extensive performance information and a role in decisions.
• Competency Acquisition and Appropriate Application — The behavioral pattern of acquiring identified competencies and applying them appropriately, alone and in combination, to complete tasks and produce outputs.