Research by Goleman and others like Hunter and Schmidt, show that symptoms like the ones listed below are often related to “Capability Problems”:
⦁ wasted salary payments
⦁ resources wasted on performance management, disciplinary processes, CCMA disputes
⦁ decreased productivity
⦁ reputational damage
⦁ decreased teamwork
⦁ decreased morale
⦁ increased turnover
Ask yourself this…
How do you build high performance teams and high-performance organisations with inferior capability?
The answer is with great difficulty. Sports teams are a good example of this. They will do whatever it takes to onboard the players and coaching staff with the best talent. At the end of the day that is what capability really is – a powerful marker of each individual’s talent in the workplace.
Have you ever seen a rugby coach try to make a good lineout jumper from a scrum half? Or a netball coach pick mostly short people for her team? Or an athletics coach trying to make a high jumper from a 220kg behemoth? Or pick his sprinter to run the marathon?
You simply must make sure that you have the right capability in your organisation, and that this capability is correctly aligned to organisational roles.
Drag, Drain and Drift
When individuals lack capability it invariably gives rise to what we call Drag, Drain and Drift. Organisations are systems made up of interdependent sub – systems. If a part of one sub – system – say an employee in production, or a pocket of employees in production have Capability problems, then this will have a knock – on effect on other parts of the organisation.
Instead of the organisation’s hard assets – finance, resources, plant, systems etc. – and soft assets – its people – being utilised as “ wind in the sails” to take the organisation forward towards its stated objectives, it becomes mired in problems like conflict, underperformance, managers compensating for the lack of capability reporting into them by doing a substantial part of their jobs, or spending inordinate amounts of time coaching subordinates, engaged in disciplinary hearings, performance management.
Extreme manifestations of poor Capability are narcissistic managers, pilfering, waste, fraud, white collar crime, work to rule, lethargy, group think, sycophancy etc. Capability issues play a significant role in all these types of problems which we will demonstrate in later Modules.
When you go back to the four characteristics of capability, you will realise that there is not much you can do if “you made the wrong pick”.
⦁ You cannot train more capability into people – as an organisation you are constrained by the capability constraints of your employees
⦁ You cannot train people for roles that their capability is ill – suited to. For example, your analytical introverts cannot be changed into become dynamic leaders and managers.
⦁ You cannot train deep seated behavioural problems out of people. For instance, your narcissistic or passive aggressive manager is never going to change.
Realising the profound implications of this, some of the most successful organisations in the world operate by the mantra of:
Select for talent/capability and train for skills. DO NOT select for skills and train for talent/capability.
The Impact of Capability Constraints.
The following visuals are useful in thinking about how Capability Constraints can impact on your organisation.