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Protecting

Keeping a competency from eroding through departures, imitation or neglect. A competency held by three people is not organisational.

The idea

How it works

Competencies erode three ways: the people who hold them leave, competitors work out how to copy them, or the organisation stops investing because the advantage feels permanent.

The distinction that matters most is between capability held by individuals and capability embedded in routines. The first walks out; the second stays, and converting one to the other is most of the work.

Working with it

In practice

  1. 01

    Find the key person dependencies

    For each competency, ask what would remain if the three most central people left in the same month.

  2. 02

    Embed in routines

    Capability written into how work is done survives departures. Capability in someone’s head does not.

  3. 03

    Watch for imitation

    Track whether competitors are closing the gap. Advantages usually erode gradually and get noticed suddenly.

  4. 04

    Keep investing after it works

    The most common erosion is neglect. A competency that stopped receiving attention is on a slow decline nobody scheduled.

One level in

The components of protecting

A component is something that exists afterwards which did not exist before — a deliverable or a mechanism, not an intention.

  1. The dependency map

    Which competencies depend on which individuals, and how heavily.

    Learn

  2. The embedding record

    What has been written into routines, systems and documentation rather than held in people.

    Learn

  3. The erosion watch

    Signs that competitors are closing the gap, checked on a schedule.

    Learn

Ask what would remain if the three most central people left in the same month. The answer is the organisational half of the competency.

The other modules in core competencies

Identification

Listing what the organisation genuinely does well, drawn from evidence rather than from self-image.

Learn

Testing for advantage

Putting each candidate through a structured test — valuable, rare, hard to imitate, and organised to exploit. Most candidates fail on rarity.

Learn

Building

Closing a capability gap, and choosing between building, hiring, partnering or acquiring. Each has a different cost, speed and permanence.

Learn
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