Learning from Business Strategy

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From the course by The State University of New York

How to Get Skilled: Introduction to Individual Skills Management (Project-Centered Course)

2 оценки

The State University of New York

How to Get Skilled: Introduction to Individual Skills Management (Project-Centered Course)

2 оценки

Do you want to gain a competitive edge on the job market? Would you like to improve the way that you organize, manage, and present your skills to succeed in a competency-based, competitive job selection? Have you prepared to compete for jobs in the age of AI-powered recruiting? This project-centered course* is designed for working professionals who want to direct their skill-building activities towards creating powerful, evidence-based, data-driven, and externally-verified job applications. When you complete the course, you’ll be able to objectively measure your level of skills acquisition against your desired job’s requirements and the likely competition. You’ll learn how to use experiential methods and tools, such as simulations, benchmarking, competency dashboards, and skills assessment to operationalize and quantify your skills. You will know how to realistically estimate your likely score in the competitive job selection; you will also find out how much of each skill you need to develop to stand out and beat the competition. In addition to improving your job applications, the course will teach you how to increase the effectiveness of your ongoing professional development by monitoring the level of skills acquisition. The course will provide you with tangible outcomes for immediate use. We’ll show you how to use a simple, powerful computer program to organize and manage your skills inventory. Your completed project will focus on your desired job and will include three components: 1) a Skillset Summary Checklist; 2) a Selection Criteria Statement; and 3) a Professional Development Plan. Upon completion of the course, you will be able to use the results of the project to strengthen your next job application (or promotion request). You’ll be able to use the same technique to direct your skill-building activities and continuously monitor their effectiveness. What is required: In the course, we’ll provide videos, readings, and learning activities. There is an optional course companion book available for purchase on Amazon.com. To download the course software, “J.A.F.A.R, Skills Manager Pro (TM)”, you will need to access the course companion website at https://www.skillsmanager.pro. The software is a copyrighted Excel spreadsheet template; for course participants, it is provided free of charge (for personal, non-commercial use only). To use the software, you will need to have a basic level of proficiency and a licensed copy of MS Excel. *About Project-Centered Courses: Project-centered courses are designed to help you complete a personally meaningful real-world project, with your instructor and a community of like-minded supportive learners with similar goals providing guidance and suggestions along the way. By actively applying new concepts as you learn, you’ll master the course content more efficiently; you’ll also get a head start on using the skills you gain to make positive changes in your life and career. When you complete the course, you’ll have a finished project that you’ll be proud to use and share.

From the lesson

What is Skills Management?

The goal of the Module is to define individual skills management, examine its theoretical foundations, and clarify its crucial role for career success in a highly competitive job market. We derive some useful lessons from business strategy; in particular, we examine how business strategists measure and manage “competitive advantage”, so that you can use a similar approach for crafting effective personal strategies in the job market. Then, we discuss the desired outcomes of individual skills management training. For this purpose, we review the Individual Skills Management Framework. (At the end of the course, you’ll be able to check your progress against the Framework).

Learning from Business Strategy7:35

Skills Management Framework11:00

Meet the Instructors

Dr. Valeri Chukhlomin
Professor
SUNY Empire State College
Amy Giaculli
Assessment Specialist
SUNY Empire State College

Learning skills management takes time.

So one may ask, why bother?

Would it not be better to invest

the limited time that I have for professional development

into something new and exciting so that I can extend my skills portfolio?

The answer to this question is, it depends.

It may well be the case that you would be better off tackling

a new functional area that might look good on your resume.

For example, you could take an online course in

data analytics if you haven't done so already.

But after a while,

particularly if you have not been very successful when competing for a position,

you might be interested in learning about how to grow,

manage, and present your skills portfolio more effectively.

This is where you, a career builder,

can learn something useful from the business world.

It is well-known that to successfully operate,

businesses must initially possess capabilities

in many functional areas such as production,

distribution, marketing, finance, accounting, and so on.

While the business stays small,

managing its operations and acquiring new capabilities comes

naturally and doesn't require special qualifications.

But at some point,

successfully competing in an ever-changing environment requires

growing businesses to learn how to use its resources effectively and efficiently.

This is where business strategy comes into play.

Business strategy helps managers define how to best utilize

available resources and reach the intended goal under competitive pressure.

In a nutshell, business strategy answers

the fundamental question of what the company's standing on the market currently is,

where the managers want it to be in the future,

and how to get from here to there.

The key concept of business strategy is competitive advantage.

These days the rhetoric of competitive advantage is extremely popular.

You probably hear a lot about the need for

career builders to get a competitive advantage in the job market.

The question that we must ask at this point is whether

competitive advantage is just a good slogan or,

alternatively, there is some useful knowledge that is

accumulated by business strategists and can be used by career builders.

We think that the problem that a career builder must

solve is very similar to one business strategist deal with.

Probably the most important thing that you can learn from

business strategists is how to approach,

define, and utilize the concept of competitive advantage.

For business strategists, competitive advantage is not a figure of

speech but a well-defined situation in a competitive market,

where one of many competitors yields higher returns than others.

Michael Porter, a professor at Harvard Business School,

is usually credited with developing

an in-depth understanding of the nature and causes of competitive advantage.

Building on Porter's ideas,

business strategists have developed a range of theories and

methodologies aimed at helping companies create and sustain a competitive advantage.

For example, one of the most influential theories introduced by Jay Barney,

a professor at Texas A&M University,

suggests that in a highly competitive environment,

businesses tend to be more successful if they stick to a resource-based view of the firm.

Management theorist CK Prahalad and Gary Hamel further

recommended that companies must pay particular attention to developing key competencies.

Key competencies are skills as they relate to a company or organization.

For example, in computer manufacturing,

a key competency is the company's ability to innovate in order to shorten time to market.

The idea behind key competencies is both simple and very powerful.

With limited resources, it makes sense for a company to

focus on their key competencies to gain a competitive advantage.

The problem, however, is how to identify and develop

a winning set of key competencies in real time under competitive pressure.

These days, many MBA programs in the US and around the globe teach

current and future business leaders how to use

sophisticated models and techniques to identify and grow key competencies.

Some of the methods used are SWOT analysis,

VRINE analysis, value chain,

PESTEL analysis, and many others.

Building on the successful implementation of key competencies in the business world,

you can utilize a similar approach to organize and

optimize your skill-building activities for career growth.

Strategically speaking, you may think about

your set of skills as emerging key competencies.

Then the fundamental question is what the current value of your skills is,

where you want to outperform your competition,

and how you can get from here to there given

the ever-changing environment and competitive pressure?

As you can see, your ability to manage, develop,

and promote your skills to accomplish

your career goals is the central element of your personal strategy.

Just like a business manager,

you may significantly benefit from

strategic management training focused on personal strategy.

Therefore, taking a class and individual skills management might be a really good idea.

Here's another reason for you to consider investing time into skills management.

In an MBA program,

all functional courses are usually holding

together and hinging on a capstone study in strategic management.

In your individual career development journey,

all skill-building activities can be linked to a study in individual skills management,

serving as a linchpin.

You may also think about skills management as

a commanding height from where you can plan and execute your professional development.

Are you ready to give it a try?

If so, let's think about

the expected learning outcomes of an individual skills management course.

What do you think you should be able to achieve upon completion of such a study?

What exactly you're going to learn?

What new capabilities would you like to gain?

How different are you going to be?

Once again, we can get useful ideas from the business world.

For example, what do you think are

the main outcomes of a strategic management course for a business manager?

Usually, upon completion of such a study,

business managers are supposed to know how to objectively

evaluate their organization against the competition,

identify and develop a set of superior key competencies,

implement and monitor a course of action to withstand the competition.

To do so, a business manager is expected to learn how to use a range of models,

tools, and techniques and demonstrate strategic thinking.

In the next lecture, you will see how you can implement

a similar approach to individual skills management.

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