When I was a kid and wanted to learn how to play the clarinet, I came up with a crude plan on how long I would practice each day. This plan included what songs I would practice playing, when I would move on to more difficult songs, etc. Employee competency is not any different. In order to grow a division or business well, you’ve got to evaluate your staff for strengths with a measurable growth plan.

Employers and CEOs often tell me that they just want to grow and deal with all the changes around them well. They often look to operations and strategies to do so.

Not very often do they look at their employees. Why?

It’s way easier to deal with operations and overall strategies than dealing with the mushy (ie, human) issues around employees. When I ask them how they matched a particular employee to a job, they often don’t have a good answer. Often times, they inherited employees through mergers and acquisitions or re-alignments within their organizations. As a result, most employees are not in a job that utilizes their strengths well. The end result of this mismatch is a bunch of unmotivated, confused, unhappy, unproductive employees who are inadvertently driving business far away from healthy growth.

What’s the cure?

Stop and consider these steps:

• Step ONE: Give each employee an assessment to find out their strengths. I created my own. I can administer this for you. Or there are online versions that are generic, as well.

• Step TWO: Does each employee have an individualized growth plan geared towards their strengths? If not, create one. This will take you sitting down with each employee to discuss their assessment results and brainstorming on how their individual growth is tied to your overall company/division growth.

• Step THREE: monitor the plan. This means you are in regularly scheduled review meetings with your staff around their growth plan and course correct as needed.

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