Competence Party

Over the last few years I have enjoyed reading Bob Lewis' weekly article "IS Survivor". His advice and thoughts may be focused on IT, but they apply just as well to pretty much any other function. This week his article deals with competency and accountability. Some highlights of his tongue-in-cheek Competency Party Platform:

"We will know what we want to accomplish, be clear in how we describe it, and know why it's a good idea.

We will concentrate our efforts on a small number of important goals, recognizing that if we try to accomplish everything we'll end up accomplishing nothing.

We will be realistic. We will choose courses of action only from among those possibilities predicated on all physical objects obeying the laws of physics, human nature not somehow changing for the better, and what has gone wrong in the past having something useful to teach us.

Our decisions will always begin by examining the evidence. And we will recognize that when our cherished principles collide with the evidence, the evidence wins. Every time.

With new evidence we will reconsider old decisions. Without it, we won't.

We will never mistake our personal experience for hard evidence. Personal experience is the evidence we know best. It's also a biased sample.

We will think first, plan next, and only then act. The only exception is a true emergency, where making any decision in the next two minutes is better than making the right decision sometime in the next several days.

We will never mistake hope for a plan. A plan describes what everyone has to do, in what order, to achieve a goal. Vague intentions and platitudes don't.

We will sweat the details. Vague intentions and platitudes don't have any, which is why those who stop with them always fail.

We will put the most qualified person we can find in every position. We'll find some other way to reward high-dollar campaign contributors. Also, if we find someone is not able to succeed at what we've asked them to do, we'll replace them with someone who is.

We will never blame anything on the law of unintended consequences. Our job is to foresee consequences, which we can usually do if we think things through. "

Bob makes some very good points to manage by. A couple of additional ones that could be included:

We will implement repeatable processes and constantly improve them. Business success and scale depends on process success.

We will measure our progress and improve accordingly. Metrics and measurements let you know how you are performing and react accordingly.