As companies world over face a turbulent business environment, it is ever more critical for them to be nimble footed. In a knowledge dominated world, it is the ability to scale competencies both ways, on demand, that ensures organizational agility.

We refer to such an agile state as one of ‘Dynamic Competency calibration’. Achieving this state calls for maturity on multiple dimensions – resource planning, recruitment, performance management, training/competency development, and other talent related processes. Most importantly, it calls for a rigorous and real-time alignment between the business direction and the competency related initiatives on the ground.

As more and more organizations strive to achieve dynamic competency calibration, each sub-process in talent management gets significantly impacted. For instance within training, average shelf life of content goes down and more critically, the training function becomes a key enabler of content creation and dissemination, than a creator. Training departments that see themselves in the future, as facilitators in a regulated internal marketplace for content, are the ones that will enjoy proximity to business strategy.

Achieving dynamic competency calibration takes a lot more than reviewing the role of the Training Department. However, by achieving a strong coupling with business concerns, CLOs can be the ones driving this change towards the objective.