Much emphasis has been placed on the skill-building demands of this phase of change. Research has shown that organizations that emphasize a broad range of skill development as part of stabilizing and anchoring their change outperform organizations that don’t. In particular there are a few key areas of skill development that contribute to high performance.
- Interpersonal skills - These were mentioned earlier, but the more interpersonally competent people are, the higher performing their individual and team interactions will be.
- Business literacy – Most non-managers don’t know how the business operates. A key ingredient for many highly effective organizations is that workers function like owners. If you want people to think and act like owners, you need to equip them with skills to do so. Raising their knowledge of financial and operational details (and other facets of the business) will promote functioning at a higher level.
- Technical skills – There are two kinds of technical skills. There are those that are specific to a team’s work process. There are also those that can apply to any process. These are skills like problem solving, statistical process control, root cause analysis, process mapping, variance analysis, etc. Process specific skills are critical to getting work done. Process general skills are critical to high performance.