Rebuilding Core Competencies When a Company Splits 53Copyright © 2005, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without writtento support and sustain the systems would be cloned in each organization by June 1, 2000,
and that the two separate organizations would be fully functional and autonomous by
the end of October 2000. In October 1999, the list of roughly 125 distinct systems (with
many variations) was relatively straightforward, but the “knowledge” or core competen-
cies needed to run these systems was basically unknown.
As employees transitioned from one organization into two, three distinct groups
needing knowledge emerged:
- New employees hired to fill gaps left by exiting or transferred personnel (such as
in the case of Agilent in Europe). - Current employees who were hired to do job A but were now doing job B because
of changes in organizational structure and/or requirements. - Current employees who were left in a reduced skill area where only one or two
people remained who had the knowledge needed to do the job(s).
The last group did not appear to have immediate needs and generally had no plans
to hire immediately, but left the company vulnerable if one person decided to leave the
organization in the near future. A strategy of creating backup personnel in key areas was
generally thought to be important to this process.
Within this context, the project to meet the strategic objective had the following
major activities: (1) to determine and articulate a method to determine the core compe-
tencies; (2) to design a way to capture, access, and update the expertise that made up
the core competency “knowledge” base; and (3) to articulate a way to keep the data
current in the future. The challenges were (1) to determine how to meet the needs of these
three groups who have potentially different gaps in knowledge in the two emerging
organizations and (2) to figure out ways to define, store, and access the needed
“knowledge” so that existing people can tap into the expertise as they need it to keep
doing their jobs.
BACKGROUND
As this project emerged, a literature search (both internal and external to the
organization) was conducted in order to determine the state of the art of developing
knowledge transfer programs and/or building (or rebuilding) core competencies. It was
soon clear that there are several directions that a person in this field can take and that
the intended purpose of any study in this area can affect the outcomes. For example, the
internal search uncovered a group within HP who had conducted what was called a core
competency study the year before (1998) to identify those critical skills, abilities, and
knowledge that were needed by employees who were considered to be the best in a
particular job group. On the surface this looked like what was needed for the task at hand,
but the researcher soon discovered that the purpose of “the core competency” study was
to further develop existing employees. As a result, the skills, abilities, and knowledge
included such things as “interpersonal sensitivity,” “managerial self-image,” and the
“ability to be self-assured.” While these are clearly important, they are not core
competency skills that are candidates for knowledge transfer with the purpose of
rebuilding two “weakened” organizations due to transferring personnel.