Henrik, thanks for the question. I think when compliance training is CYA for legality (e.g. “we gave him sexual harassment training, so when he did it he’s a bad person, we’re a good company”), it’s not on this diagram. When you truly want to ensure new responses are there, then it fits under courses and performance. And your rethink is spot on: see the ‘design backwards’ reply I wrote to James’ comment.

Or maybe we’re thinking about it from the wrong perspective? If one were to analyze compliance training from a design thinking perspective, maybe there shouldn’t be anything called “compliance training” but rather “Our Service Reps aren’t allowed to service our machines unless we have documented proof of their knowledge and skills. How do we solve that the most efficiently?” The solution might be something completely different than “train them and document the fact”.

James, I see competency modeling falling under formal learning. That is, we use such models to define what we should be curating or creating. Increasingly, however, I think it’s more work than makes sense (see an old/new picture of L&D activities here). Pretty soon, I reckon, anything that can be so well described in a competency model will be automated. And other stuff will be too fluid to define before it’s out of date.

Two other thoughts: competency modeling needs to design backwards to separate out what’s in the head versus what’s in the world. I’d also like to devolve responsibility to the communities that are around those roles and skills to maintain their own competency definitions. Thanks for the inquiry.

I wonder where you see Competency Modeling (defining skills, knowledge, behavior for a specific role) in this picture?