Competency model
development
Your values tell people how to act. Your OKRs tell them what to hit. Almost nothing tells them what it takes to get there.
Most companies build two-thirds of a performance system. Values set the how. OKRs set the what. The skills required to close the gap between them — the who — rarely get written down at all.
That is the piece that breaks first as you scale. It's the piece we build with you.
A complete system needs three parts
Most companies have two of them.
Values
Your standard for how people treat each other, make decisions, and represent the company.
OKRs & KPIs
Your targets — the revenue, growth, and retention numbers you measure against.
Competencies
The skills, behaviors, and judgment it takes to hit those targets without breaking those values. Leave it undefined and execution quietly comes apart as you grow — and nobody can say exactly why.
Gut feel vs. a calibrated model
The same six decisions, run two ways. This is the whole argument for doing the work.
Values and OKRs both hit a ceiling
Both are necessary. Neither is enough.
Values tell people who to be
- They're aspirational, not actionable. "Collaborative" tells nobody what to do in a hard conversation.
- Everyone can recite them. Almost nobody can demonstrate them on demand.
- They rarely touch hiring, coaching, or promotion — so they never shape behavior.
- They measure character, not capability. The right values with the wrong skills still misses.
OKRs tell you when, not why
- They lag. By the time the number turns red, the skill gap behind it has compounded for months.
- They create pressure without a development path — teams pushed at targets they were never equipped to hit.
- They measure the destination, never the capability to reach it.
- Hitting the number once doesn't make it repeatable. Nothing turns a win into a standard.
A competency model is what turns values into behavior and OKRs into a repeatable capability — instead of a target you either hit or you didn't.
Three signals it's time
No shared definition of "good"
Your leadership team debates candidates for an hour and still can't name what they're measuring.
Hiring faster than you can agree
Headcount is growing quarterly and the bar moves with whoever ran the last loop.
Gut feel no longer defensible
A board, a PE sponsor, or your own promotion cycle now needs a standard you can show.
Four factors, not a library
We start from a validated, research-backed competency framework — the Korn Ferry Leadership Architect — then narrow it with your leadership team to the handful that actually predict performance in your business. Four factors keep the result usable instead of academic.
Thoughts
Understanding the business, making complex decisions, creating the new and different.
Results
Taking initiative, managing execution, holding focus on performance.
People
Building real relationships, optimizing diverse talent, influencing without authority.
Self
Being authentic, staying open, staying flexible when the plan changes.
Four dynamics of a championship team
This practice is the Skills piece. We build it with the other three in view — a model that ignores structure or dynamics doesn't survive contact.
Accomplish
The goals the business actually has to hit.
Skills
The capability required to get there, defined and calibrated.
Structure
The roles, comp, and reporting lines that make it possible.
Dynamics
The trust that makes the standard stick.
What a breakthrough team requires
Competencies give you the shared language for these five. They don't replace them.
Affinity
Real relationships, not just working ones.
Ownership
Accountability nobody has to assign.
Interdependence
The team wins or loses together.
Purpose
A reason to push past average.
Risk
The safety to take it.
Three phases, four to six weeks
Align
Set three to four organizational goals with your leadership team, then define what foundational, transformative, and breakthrough performance looks like against each one.
Select & calibrate
Narrow the framework to the competencies that predict performance in your function, and define what each one looks like at every level.
Roll out
Build the model into hiring scorecards, interview guides, and coaching conversations — so it runs decisions instead of sitting in a deck.
Deliverables
- A calibrated competency framework mapped to your organizational goals
- Level-specific behavioral indicators for every competency
- Interview guides and hiring scorecards built on the framework
- A coaching and development guide managers will actually use
- Integration guidance for your existing performance review process
Competency model vs. job description
A job description lists duties. A competency model defines what performing those duties at a high level looks like — the behaviors and judgment that separate an average hire from a top one. One says what the role covers; the other says what excellence in it looks like.
Why us
Operators, not theorists
Built by executives who have hired, coached, and managed out against these competencies themselves.
Tied to go-to-market
Competencies mapped to what your revenue strategy actually needs from the team this year.
Strategy executed
A model built to run hiring and performance decisions — not to sit in a binder.
AI-accelerated
AI-assisted mapping and calibration compress a multi-month process into weeks.
Questions we get
What is a competency model?+
A framework that defines the skills, knowledge, and behaviors required to perform a role at a high level. It guides hiring, coaching, and promotion decisions.
How is it different from our values or OKRs?+
Values define how you want people to behave. OKRs define what you need to hit. A competency model defines the skills required to close the gap between the two — the connective tissue most companies never write down.
How long does it take?+
Four to six weeks across three phases: align on organizational goals, select and calibrate competencies with your leadership team, then roll the framework into hiring and coaching.
How is this different from a generic HR competency library?+
Off-the-shelf libraries give you definitions. We calibrate those definitions to your business goals and your leadership team's read on what predicts performance — so the model reflects your organization, not a template.
Can it integrate with our existing performance reviews?+
Yes. We build the framework to plug into whatever review process you already run, rather than requiring you to replace it.
Who needs to be involved?+
Your CEO or functional leader, plus the three to six people who make hiring and promotion calls. Calibration only holds if the people using the model help build it.
Define what good looks like
Thirty minutes is usually enough to know whether this is the right practice for your team.