Do your direct reports have the skills and knowledge they need to perform your group’s core processes superbly—and thus to support the strategy you have identified? If not, the entire fragile architecture of your group could fall apart. A skills base comprises these four types of knowledge:
- Individual expertise: Gained through training, education, and experience
- Relational knowledge: An understanding of how to work together to integrate individual knowledge to achieve specified goals
- Embedded knowledge: The core technologies on which your group’s and performance depend, such as customer databases or R&D technologies
- Meta-knowledge: The awareness of where to go to get critical information; for example, through external affiliations such as research institutions and technology partners