Core Competencies
Working Smarter, Not Harder!
Abdulrahman Al Kindi
The Opportunity
You have a good product, a good market share, good distribution. How do you "raise the bar" and become truly great?
The Solution
In most cases, greatness doesn't come from doing the same things but trying harder. When you do that, even the combined efforts of all of your people are too diffuse to make much of a difference. Like having hundreds of people pushing with their hands on a brick wall, you spend a lot of energy getting nowhere.
Greatness comes from focus. Having the effort of those hundreds of people translate into a single point of impact, like a single sledgehammer, will definitely have more impact.
Core competencies are "focus points" that funnel peoples' skills and efforts to make a greater effect.
Successful companies often have one main core competency, or a closely related cluster of core competencies that support each other.
What Are Core Competencies?
Core competencies are the key skills, characteristics and assets that your company brings to the marketplace. These competencies, on an organizational level, are a synergistic blending of the core competencies that your people individually bring to work every day.
What does your company do? If you have to think about that more than a second or two, it may be too complicated.
Example company core competencies:
Excellent Customer Service
(State, Nation, Worldwide) Information Networking
New Product Research and Development
Market Research
Relationship Development/Outreach
These are obviously very broad competencies that would work for nearly any company. Yours are probably mu ...