"Managing Human Capabilities"

Alan Brache

Journal of Organizational Excellence

Autumn 2003, pp. 61-72

The author of this article states: "Human capabilities are people's unique sets of skills, knowledge, and personal values and beliefs. It is useful for an organization to determine what human capabilities it needs—by examining its strategic, business process, departmental, and job level requirements—and then identify what human capabilities it currently possesses and the steps it can take to close any gaps."

An eleven-step process is presented for addressing the human capabilities dimension of an organization:

1. Develop a strategy for your business
2. Identify and (re)design your strategic and key support processes
3. Define the outputs that each department should produce as its contribution to each key process
4. Based on the department outputs, identify the outputs expected from individuals and/or teams
5. Identify the skills, knowledge, and personal values and beliefs that are required by each job output
6. Where needed to elucidate the output of Step 5, identify (a) the physical capabilities, intellectual capabilities, and psychological capabilities needed for each skill, and (b) the intellectual capabilities that are essential for each knowledge requirement
7. Document your current capabilities in terms of the "should" established in Steps 5 and 6
8. Identify and set priorities on the gaps between your current capabilities and what you need
9. Develop a human capability plan that describes how the gaps will be closed using skill development, succession planning, and/or career development
10. Use your performance measurement system as the basis for determining which of your performance gaps are and are not being caused by human capability deficiencies
11. Regularly monitor and update your human capability plan

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