competence 2.0- resilience in the face of recession

Competing in the Post Recession Economy

Education and Workforce Development 2 2/23/2009

Resilience in the Face of Recession Education, Training and Workforce Development

for the Post-Recession Economy

With clear-eyed leadership, reinvented policies and practices, and shrewd stimulation, the American economy will recover from our current crisis. But we will not thrive in the global economy if we do not transform our policies, practices, jobs, industries, and competences for the 21

st century. This reinvention

should be informed by the insights provided by the current crisis and the need to lift out of recession in a fashion that positions America for future competitive advantage. In weathering recession, we must sustain, enhance and leverage the innovations necessary to thrive in the future. Today’s financial crisis offers several clear lessons. It has proved that being well-trained and proficient in existing ways of doing business are not enough to assure the success of individuals, enterprises, cities, regions and nations. Risks raised by incompetence or malfeasance in others and systemic failures in judgment and practice and new developments must also be taken into account. Over the next few years, long-established perspectives and practices in all sectors will have to adapt to changing conditions and new solutions. Luckily, a practical, scalable solution is emerging. Breakthroughs in technology and practice are leading to what we call "Competence 2.0". This involves new and powerful ways to acquire and track high-importance news, insights, related skills and organizational routines. Competence 2.0 solutions involve a far larger, more diverse group of people (not just a small group of today's managers) in tapping early and deeply into multiple knowledge sources. These include communities of practice, which can spot and take advantage of system-wide "weak signals" of impending significant developments, be they risks, changes, or opportunities. Resulting changes in perspective and practice must be rapidly, deeply and surely embedded throughout enterprises. The focus of leaders is shifting. The initial impulse to climb out of the recession by any means is elevated to recover from the recession in ways that lead to greater insight and resiliency. This will require new, sustainable perspectives, practices, and competences in virtually all industries and jurisdictions. Especially critical will be changes to financial services and real estate, which will need to realign their approaches to risk, transparency, and ethics. Other industries needing realignment include food production and safety, energy, transportation, healthcare, hospitality and tourism, and retail. Leaders must also anticipate and reflect the coming, transformative impacts of new technologies (genomic, robotic, information, nano, and others) that will further change the rules of the game, over time. Education, training and workforce development practices must be transformed to fulfill these imperatives. Put simply, we are facing a “Big Switch” in perspectives, practices, and competences. Leaders, enterprises, and political entities will all need to adapt to changing rules, redirect past practices, and prepare for new approaches. This will be pervasive. In the spirit of “not wasting the current crisis” the Big Switch will involve: 1) many dramatic changes in financial, business, and real estate practices and services, 2) switching the relationship between global and local sources of production and information, and 3) deploying a portfolio of other changes necessary to achieve environmental and financial sustainability. To achieve the Big Switch, leaders must develop the capacity to forecast, acquire, and sustain breakthrough competences and also create or protect jobs using those competences. They must do so at a scale and speed that has never before been possible. The most successful leaders will be those who create adaptive mechanisms for perpetual refreshment and expeditionary adjustment of these skills and competences, deeply embedded in organizational processes. We call these new practices Competence 2.0. They deal broadly and deeply with the concept of competence and deploy the social tools and techniques of Web 2.0. These include ubiquitous communication and computing, profoundly connected urban environments, powerful new forms of social



networking and peer-to-peer learning technologies. Competence 2.0 is already revolutionizing education and training. Moreover, it is also transforming other organizational processes: leadership development, business process reinvention, strategic planning, executing strategy, and building organizational capacity, for example. Using Competence 2.0, these processes will become instruments for adaptively engaging large groups in planning for the future, changing their approaches to business practice, and assuring that new practices are consistently deployed within Future Capitals, and across regions and nations. Competence 2.0 provides a mechanism for sharing fresh perspectives and competences in ways that span traditional organizational boundaries and practices. Competence 2.0 networks and practices extend beyond single organizations and institutions to span industries, cities, nations, and regions. They empower individuals to take greater responsibility for their competence and employability. Moreover, these networks require the inclusion of new insights and competences at a far greater scale and pace than traditional approaches. While traditional providers of education, training, and workforce development are playing a role in the development of Competence 2.0 practices, the most impactful applications will require new organizational structures and approaches.

Value Propositions for Competence 2.0

Competence 2.0 is fast, fluid, flexible, and affordable. We proclaim that Competence 2.0 is a critical element in a leader’s toolkit in lifting out of today’s recession and assuring long-term growth. Its intelligent use of advances in social resources and sense-making is the key ingredient that enables leaders to achieve the following:

• Create newer, faster, smarter, cheaper approaches to creating high quality jobs for the future and anticipating, acquiring, sharing, and refreshing competences among large groups;

• Enable previously unobtainable speed, scale, scope, and range in the development of new competences;

• Add transparency and judgment to organizational decision making processes and create trip-wire networks to detect risk-producing practices;

• Deeply embed these practices in their organizational cultures, achieving deeper, surer, truer competences to improve productivity and performance within their specific contexts;

• Utilize new generations of performance metrics and action analytics™ to track competences and link them to enhanced performance;

• Transform all organizational processes (education and training, leadership development, business process reinvention, strategic planning, executing strategy, building organizational capacity) into large-scale, adaptive learning opportunities;

• Establish new competence networks and communities of practice, fostering transformative initiatives at the enterprise, industry, and city/region/nation levels;

• Leverage substantial, existing investments in information and communication technology infrastructures, massively connected urban environments, and knowledge sharing tools and techniques and shape future investments in infrastructure, capacity and competence.

This is the time to leverage innovation and reinvention. Shrewd leaders will utilize Competence 2.0 practices to create breakthroughs in financial sustainability and competitive advantage.



Understanding the Elements of Competence 2.0

Competence 2.0 is more than an artificially enhanced form of e-learning and e-training. While it can lead to substantial enhancement in “time-to-competence”, its real importance is that it makes purposeful and informed use of our capacity as social creatures. It’s about interactions, feedback, and sustained conversations that are powerful, purposeful, and perpetual. Competence 2.0 practices are building on existing processes and networks (learning, leadership development, and strategic planning), combining new and reinvented elements. Competence 2.0 practices are emerging in a spectrum of settings ranging from individual enterprises to cities, regions, industries, and nations. Competence 2.0 networks can span traditional boundaries, helping your as well as others’ organizations to recognize and remedy gaps in their competences and weaknesses in their practices that could hurt them as well as you. Many emerging Competence 2.0 initiatives are being created today, building on existing learning and professional development networks. New Infrastructures, Technologies, and Tools. Competence 2.0 is made possible by the latest generation of Web 2.0-based infrastructures, technologies, and tools:

• Vastly more effective ways to track what is going on in internal and external environments and improve your community’s knowledge base – this involves building on today’s techniques and systems for tracking, forecasting, and managing technological and other changes, using profoundly connected urban environments, social networking, and peer-to-peer technologies;

• Decision support and artificial intelligence tools that aid in spotting patterns; plus e-portfolios and e-resumes, networked for cities, regions, and nations;

• Analytics and performance metrics that provide more powerful ways to track results and improve performance; and

• Open resources for learning and competence that can be shared, repurposed, and combined.

New Techniques and Practices. These new tools enable a range of reinvented and/or new practices:

• Active mentoring, coaching, modeling of both successes and recovery from failures in particular endeavors; Immersive, embedded, contextualized learning that tailors competence to specific settings,

• Leveraging competence repositories (that provide access to resources on current competences) and competence observatories (that provide foresight on emerging competencies that matter); Competence-gap-based matching of learning needs and learning opportunities, which enable the construction of personalized learning paths that drastically reduce the time to reach desired competences.

• Learning “why” and learning “to be” as well as learning “what and how”; plus perpetual learning and active demonstration of mastery, and capturing of such demonstrations;

• Blurring of boundaries between learning and work and between different organizational processes; and

• Providing leadership in organizational redesign, building organizational capacity, and navigating change.

Competence 2.0 leverages these new tools and techniques to create a range of valuable results.



Competence 2.0 Practices Produce Valuable Results

Faster, Smarter, Fresher

• Utilize social networking dynamics and technology-accelerated knowledge sharing to assure speed, adaptability, and freshness

• Use foresight processes and communities to predict future needs and dynamics, and to target investments in future infrastructures, practices, competences

• Create adaptive, rapidly responsive competence repositories, observatories, and networks supported by active feedback mechanisms

• Share results with other organizations and participate in competence communities that reach beyond individual enterprises.

Cheaper, Sharper, Clearer

• Reinvent traditional “institutional” and “training” models for learning, assessment, and certification. Unbundle so assessment and certification can be handled separately from learning.

• Leverage peer-to-peer learning, open resources and communities, and mash-up technologies to drive down cost and enable perpetual re-skilling. .

• Empower learners and workers to assume greater responsibility for their own competence and employability.

• Focus attention sharply on “what is needed” today and tomorrow, not “what is available” or “what we used to do.”

• Focus on competences at any necessary level (unskilled, semi-skilled, skilled trades and crafts, both existing and emerging professions, high-performing organization skills).

Deeper, Surer, Truer

• Use designed and free-form social networks to deeply embed competence in specific organizational contexts.

• Focus on what makes a difference in specific contexts (create demonstrable outcomes, success factors, and feedback loops tailored to specific organizations).

• Link embedded competence networks with all organizational processes.

• Provide for perpetual refreshment of competences at all levels in the enterprise.

Broader, Greener, Richer

• Utilize the broadest definition of competences for the 21

st century as described by Thomas

Friedman in The World Is Flat – communication skills, the capacity to work in inclusive teams, the ability to perpetually learn, and a host of skills relating to sustainable economics.

• Enable richer competence environments, as needed, to stretch the range of competences acquired by practitioners.

• Capture emerging green skills and perspectives, across multiple communities, and encourage their embedding in primary, secondary, and tertiary education.



Examples of Competence 2.0 in Action in Different Settings

Capitals, Regions, Nations

• State-Wide Work and Learning Networks. Example: Pervasive collaborations in State of Minnesota, USA. Collaborations between K-12, post-secondary education, employers, and workforce developers result in competence development. Example: Oregon Open Campus. A partnership, focusing on community, between Oregon State University, the Association of Oregon Counties, and many of Oregon’s community colleges, K-12 education systems, and local businesses. Example: Regional Funding Collaborative for Workforce Development, National Fund for Workforce Solutions. A major workforce initiative

• Regional Competency Networks. Example: Nuventive USA and University of Nottingham, UK. East Midlands ePortfolio-based competency collaborations for education and employers. Portability of qualifications across networks and places.

Industries

• Global Food Sourcing, Safety and Sustainability. Example: Food Safety Knowledge Network. A joint initiative between CIES – The Food Business Forum and the College of Agriculture at Michigan State University (MSU) will reach food safety workers all over the globe.

• Real Estate, Urban Land Development, and Building Construction – Professional Development Networks. Example: Real Estate Associates Network (REAP). A professional mentorship and apprenticeship program sponsored by the Urban Land Institute (ULI) in the USA can be leveraged through collaborations with local institutions and extended to new regions.

• Health Competence Networks. Example: Hematology Competence Network, European Union. Continuous competence refreshment for hematology professionals in 19 EU nations.

Individual Enterprises

• Embedded Leadership Development and Performance Enhancement Networks. Examples: B.F. Saul Company and Marriott, Inc. in collaboration with Virginia Tech Cooperative Leadership Initiative, USA. Social networking and analytics/performance simulation used to dramatically enhance customer satisfaction and employee satisfaction, performance, and retention.

• Entrepreneurship and Innovation Networks. Examples: Intel Entrepreneurship and Innovation Network and Global Shell Livewire Network. Provide students with best-in-class ideas on entrepreneurship and innovation globally.

Education Enterprise Networks

• Serving the Underserved, Improving Student Success. Example. Minnesota State Colleges and Universities. Several initiatives focus on learner success: Serving the Underserved and Backpacks to Briefcases.

• Effective Writing and Communication. Example: Social Writing Application Program (SWAP) at Michigan State University. Social networking and analytics improve writing skills.

• Overcoming Shortages of Students in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM). Example: The Swedish Universities Math Portal (http://math.se). Provides students with an effective yet thorough learning process with multiple learning strategies.



Transforming Education, Training and Workforce Development for the Post-Recession Economy

Competence 2.0 practices can be deployed to transform education, training, and workforce development. 1. Create enterprise- and/or industry-based competence communities to reinvent practices. For

example, pervasively reinventing practices in the financial services industry could be achieved by Competence 2.0 networks that are industry-wide and/or enterprise-specific. Such efforts could involve partnerships between professional and trade associations, governments, universities, and other learning enterprises. The Food Safety Knowledge Network, created by the Food Business Forum and Michigan State University, is a case in point. Real estate, healthcare, energy, transportation and other industries could also benefit from such networks, building on existing initiatives.

2. Nurture embedded competence and leadership development networks in enterprises of all kinds. Competence 2.0 approaches could be deployed to reinvent approaches to training, competence building, talent management, and leadership development in almost any enterprise, public or private, in any industry. Examples such as the practices deployed by the Virginia Tech Cooperative Leadership Institute and others demonstrate the potential of these approaches.

3. Create “green career” networks. Competence 2.0 networks could be utilized to develop and promulgate green careers skills, dealing with both the skills and jobs sides of the equation. These could be made available to support learning by students in K-20 education or by people already in the workforce. Existing, emergent green careers initiatives and enterprises could accelerate their development by deploying Competence 2.0 approaches. Competence 2.0 green networks would be decisively more cross-disciplinary and capture emerging competences faster than existing initiatives.

4. Sustain employment-focused social networks to support the preparation and transition of critical populations. Members of the Armed Forces transitioning to civilian employment could be included in Competence 2.0 networks that would engage them before, during, and after their transition to civilian employment. Similarly, existing programs for transitioning the prison population could be further enhanced by utilizing Competence 2.0 networks, dramatically reducing recidivism.

5. Leverage and accelerate the development of existing regional learning and work networks. Most states support aggressive partnership efforts between education, workforce development agencies, and employers to link and support work and learning. Deploying Competence 2.0 practices can accelerate these developments. Potential candidates include the examples cited in the figure on page 5: Minnesota State Colleges and Universities/State of Minnesota and Oregon Open Campus.

6. Improve the performance of at-risk students in traditional educational institutions. Virtually

every state has programs to improve the academic success of at-risk students. Substantial programs are being supported by a host of philanthropic organizations. Competence 2.0 practices can be used both to share and disseminate insights on “what works” in serving at risk students and in developing the competence and capacity of such students. Social networked-based learning could engage at-risk students in active, immersive learning experiences focusing on competences, early in their learning careers and continuing through to transitions to employment.

7. Improve the financial sustainability of US public education. The financial model for affordable

public higher education is broken. Attaining financial sustainability requires deploying Competence 2.0 as part of the reinvention of PK-20 education, providing cheaper alternatives to traditional instruction. In addition, time-to-degree can be reduced by bridging/pathways programs that enable students to achieve associate degrees in 1 year and bachelors degrees in 3, dramatically reducing remediation, and refocusing on active, immersive, competence-based learning. Similar techniques can be used to grow enrollments in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM).



The Competence 2.0 Community of Practice Strategic Initiatives, Inc. has launched the Competence 2.0 Community of Practice, in order to:

• Raise the consciousness of leaders regarding the potential of community knowledge, intelligently exploited, to support the pervasive reinvention of policies and practices that will lift economies out of recession in a fashion that will position them for future competitive advantage;

• Build support around the imperative of sustaining, enhancing and leveraging the innovations in processes and practices necessary to thrive in the post-recession future;

• Attract leading-edge practitioners of each of the elements of Competence 2.0 from all over the globe who raise their capacity;

• Create, aggregate, and sustain a Competence 2.0 Body of Knowledge (BoK) as an open resource, which is freely available to practitioners all over the world;

• Attract sponsors, investors, and leaders who wish to support Competence 2.0 applications in their enterprises, organizations, and/or political jurisdictions;

• Raise and deploy funding to leverage, scale, and commercialize Competence 2.0 applications in appropriate settings; and

• Raise funding and conduct research to assess the impacts of Competence 2.0 initiatives and to disseminate results.

The concept of Competence 2.0 and the Community of Practice originated in the US and were discussed at a workshop on “Competing on Competence” at the Future Capitals Summit held in Abu Dhabi, UAE on January 13-15, 2009 and supported by the Abu Dhabi Chamber of Commerce and Industry. The workshop was coordinated by Dr. Donald M. Norris, President of Strategic Initiatives, who offered to organize and coordinate the Competence 2.0 Community of Practice. Strategic Initiatives, Inc, has made available the conceptual framework, case studies, and best practices that will catalyze the emerging Competence 2.0 Community of Practice. Dr. Norris will work with community members to develop an organizational structure and a code of operation for the Community. Dr. Ambjorn Naeve, head of the Knowledge Management Research Group at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Sweden, is coordinating the collaborative environment and Body of Knowledge for the Community of Practice. A variety of practitioners are participating in the Competence 2.0 Community of Practice. These include practitioners associated with the examples cited on page 5, many of the attendees from the Abu Dhabi workshop, and others. A portfolio of open resources on Competence 2.0 and the Community of Practice is available at http://tinyurl.com/cj8gbm.

Competence 2.0 ® is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office by Strategic Initiatives, Inc., which has made it available to the Competence 2.0 Community of Practice.