The Competence Paradox: Necessity Or Irrelevance?

In today's rapidly changing world, the idea of competence – having the right skills and abilities to perform well – has become more important yet more complex than ever. As individuals and organizations alike strive to keep up with the demands of an increasingly uncertain future, a puzzling question emerges: Are competencies still crucial, or are they becoming less and less relevant?

This article explores this "competence paradox," drawing on insights from philosophy, psychology, and organizational theory to paint a nuanced picture of the changing nature of competence in the 21st century. While some argue that specific skills are becoming obsolete faster than ever, others contend that developing the right competencies is the key to thriving in an uncertain world.

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What Exactly Is Competence?

Before diving into the paradox, let's clarify what we mean by competence. Danish professor Knud Illeris (2014) defines it as "the ability to act appropriately in a given situation, in relation to specific demands". In other words, competence isn't just about what you know, but about how you apply that knowledge to real-world problems and contexts.

Other researchers have proposed that competence has multiple dimensions. Le Deist and Winterton (2005), for example, suggest four key facets:

1. Cognitive competencies: The knowledge and understanding you possess.
2. Functional competencies: The practical skills you can apply.
3. Social competencies: How you interact with others and manage relationships.
4. Meta-competencies: Your ability to learn, adapt, and self-reflect.

To illustrate, let's consider the competencies a teacher might need in a modern classroom:

• Cognitive: Deep knowledge of the subject matter, understanding of learning theories.
• Functional: Lesson planning, using educational technologies, assessing student work.
• Social: Building positive relationships with students and colleagues, effective communication.
• Meta: Continuously learning and improving one's practice, adapting to new curricula.

This example shows how real-world competence involves a complex interplay of different types of abilities that go beyond simple skills or knowledge.

The Limits of Assessing Competence

However, measuring and developing these multi-faceted competencies is far from straightforward. Philosopher Thomas Nagel (1974) famously argued that we can never fully understand the subjective experience of another being. His thought experiment "What is it like to be a bat?" suggests that even if we study a bat's brain and behavior, we can't truly know what it feels like to perceive the world through echolocation.

Similarly, the subjective, contextual nuances of a person's competence – their unique experiences, thought processes, and ways of applying skills – may always remain partially opaque to external assessors. Standardized tests and checklists, while useful, risk reducing the rich complexity of competence to oversimplified metrics.

Danish psychologist Svend Brinkmann (2015) warns that this reductionist approach to competence can lead to a narrow "development compulsion", where people feel pressured to continuously optimize themselves against predefined benchmarks rather than pursuing more authentic growth.

So while frameworks like the one proposed by Le Deist and Winterton can help us appreciate the multi-dimensional nature of competence, we must also remain humble about our ability to fully capture it from the outside.

The Case for Competence in an Uncertain World

Despite these measurement challenges, the case for competence development in today's world is compelling. We live in a time of unprecedented change and complexity, where the problems we face – from climate change to social inequality to public health crises – increasingly demand novel, multidisciplinary solutions. In this landscape, a narrow set of fixed skills is no longer sufficient.

Researchers Rittel and Webber (1973) call these modern challenges "wicked problems" – issues so complex, with so many interwoven factors and stakeholders, that they defy simple solution. Tackling such problems requires a flexible, adaptable skill set, the ability to think systemically, collaborate across boundaries, and continuously learn.

Organizations, too, are feeling the pressure to upskill their workforces for an uncertain future. The World Economic Forum's Future of Jobs Report (2020) predicts that by 2025, the rapid digitization of the economy will displace 85 million jobs while creating 97 million new ones.

A 2020 World Economic Forum report estimates that the "half-life" of professional skills - the time it takes for them to become half as valuable as they were before - is now around just 5 years, down from 10-15 years a generation ago (Illanes et al., 2020). Continuous reskilling and upskilling are becoming survival imperatives.

Research by McKinsey (2020) also found that organizations that successfully reskill their employees see positive business impacts, from increased efficiency to higher employee satisfaction and revenue. Deloitte's 2019 Global Human Capital Trends report similarly emphasizes the importance of creating a culture of continuous learning for long-term organizational resilience.

At an individual level, the concept of "lifelong employability" (Davies et al., 2019) suggests that in a rapidly changing job market, the key to career security is no longer mastery of a fixed profession, but the ability to continuously adapt one's competencies. Like the teacher who must continually update their skills to keep pace with new technologies and pedagogies, we all need to become lifelong learners to stay relevant.

The Limits of the Competency Paradigm

And yet, even as the importance of competence grows, there are reasons to question the sufficiency of an individualistic, competency-centric view. A growing body of research suggests that in today's interconnected, team-based work environments, individual competencies alone are not the sole determinants of performance.

Woolley et al. (2010), for example, found that a group's collective intelligence – its ability to perform well across a range of tasks – depends not just on the individual IQs of its members, but on the quality of their social interactions. Groups with higher levels of social perceptiveness, equality in conversational turn-taking, and more women tended to outperform groups of individually brilliant but socially insensitive people.

Similarly, Google's famous Project Aristotle (Duhigg, 2016) found that the key differentiator of its most effective teams was not the individual skills of their members, but the presence of psychologically safe environments where people felt free to take risks and voice dissenting opinions.

These findings suggest that a myopic focus on individual competencies risks overlooking the relational and contextual factors that enable those competencies to be expressed and combined productively. Put another way, even a team of A-players won't necessarily perform well if the interpersonal dynamics are toxic.

Moreover, in a world of increasing complexity and specialization, the notion that any one person can possess all the competencies needed to solve multifaceted problems seems increasingly untenable. As Riel Miller (2015), Head of Foresight at UNESCO, argues, in the future "the emphasis will shift from the individual as the unit of competence to teams, collectives and systems as the units of competence" (p. 18). Collaborative, cross-functional teaming and effective knowledge-sharing across organizations become paramount.

The Promise and Perils of Competence Clarification

As we navigate the shifting landscape of competence in the 21st century, one approach that has gained traction is the idea of "competence clarification" - the process of making the implicit dimensions of competence more explicit and codified. By clearly articulating the key components, behaviors, and outcomes associated with specific competencies, proponents argue, we can create a shared language and framework for assessment, development, and alignment. Competence clarification promises to bring a degree of rigor and precision to the often ambiguous and subjective realm of skills and abilities.

However, the idea of competence clarification also raises a critical question: In a world where the very nature of competence is fluid and ever-evolving, is the pursuit of clarification a valuable endeavor or a misguided attempt to pin down the inherently mutable? If the skills and abilities we need are constantly shifting in response to new technologies, changing market demands, and complex global challenges, any effort to clarify them may be quickly rendered obsolete. Moreover, the very process of clarification may inadvertently reify or ossify competencies that should remain flexible and adaptable, constraining rather than enabling agile learning and growth.

This tension speaks to the heart of the competence paradox. On one hand, some degree of clarification and codification seems necessary to enable effective communication, coordination, and development of competencies at scale. Without a shared understanding of what we mean by "collaboration" or "critical thinking," it becomes difficult to cultivate and assess these vital capacities in a systematic way. On the other hand, an overemphasis on clarification risks rigidifying the very competencies we seek to develop, replacing the rich, situated, and embodied nature of real-world skills with static and decontextualized abstractions.

Navigating this tension requires a delicate balance. Rather than an all-or-nothing proposition, competence clarification might be best approached as an ongoing, iterative process of sensemaking and recalibration - a continual negotiation between the explicit and the implicit, the codified and the contextual. In this view, competence frameworks and taxonomies become provisional maps rather than definitive territories - aids to navigation rather than fixed destinations. They serve as a starting point for dialogue and alignment, but remain open to questioning, revision, and adaptation as the landscape of competence continues to evolve.

Ultimately, the value of competence clarification may lie not in its ability to definitively capture the essence of competence, but in the very process of grappling with its complexities and contradictions. By engaging in the difficult work of articulating, debating, and refining our understanding of the skills and capacities we need to thrive, we sharpen our collective intelligence and ability to adapt to an uncertain future. In this sense, competence clarification becomes not an end in itself, but a means to keep the conversation about competence alive and generative in an ever-changing world.

Embracing the Paradox: A Developmental Approach

So how do we resolve the competence paradox? The answer may lie in embracing it not as a problem to solve, but as a creative tension to navigate with nuance and flexibility.

On one hand, the reality of accelerating change means that specific skills can become obsolete more rapidly than ever. The technical skills a software engineer learns today may be outdated in a few years as new programming languages and paradigms emerge. In this sense, pursuing competence can feel like chasing a moving target.

Yet the meta-competencies of learning, adaptability, and self-reflection become more important than ever in this context. The most valuable form of competence may not be mastery of any particular skill set, but what psychologist Carol Dweck (2006) calls a "growth mindset" – a deep belief in one's ability to continuously learn and grow. From this view, competence is not a static state of being but an ongoing process of becoming.

Danish researcher Lene Tanggaard (2016) captures this well with the concept of "competence translation." Rather than seeing competencies as fixed, she argues, we need to creatively transfer and recontextualize them to navigate new situations and challenges. Like a language translator moving between linguistic contexts, we must continuously "translate" our competencies into new domains.

This developmental perspective suggests some shifts in how we approach competence:

• From static knowledge acquisition to "learning to learn" and meta-cognitive skills.
• From narrow technical training to broad, transferable competencies like critical thinking, creativity, and collaboration.
• From individual skill assessment to fostering psychological safety and effective group dynamics.
• From top-down skill mandates to employee-driven learning journeys aligned with personal and organizational purpose.
• From one-off training events to continuous on-the-job learning and reflective practice.

At an organizational level, this might look like creating what Peter Senge (1990) calls "learning organizations" – workplaces designed to foster continuous, collaborative learning and adaptation. Practices like project-based learning, job rotations, peer coaching, and After Action Reviews can embed learning into the fabric of daily work.

At a societal level, it might mean moving from narrow vocational education to instilling transferable "21st century skills" and creating flexible, lifelong learning ecosystems. The World Economic Forum (2015), for example, identifies critical thinking/problem-solving, creativity, communication, and collaboration as the core competencies needed to thrive in the future economy.

Conclusion: Navigating the Paradox

The competence paradox is not a problem to be solved but a tension to be navigated. In a world where change is the only constant, the very notion of fixed, definable competencies seems to be losing its grip. Yet the imperative to cultivate the skills and capacities needed to thrive in an uncertain future has never been greater.

Embracing this paradox requires a fundamental shift in our approach to competence - from a static, individualistic, and reductionistic paradigm to a dynamic, relational, and holistic one. It means moving from competence as a possession to competence as a practice, from isolated skills to integrated capacities, from decontextualized assessment to situated development.

Competence clarification, in this view, becomes one tool among many for navigating this shifting terrain - a way to periodically take stock, surface assumptions, and enable more focused and intentional development. But it must be balanced with a deep appreciation for the fluid, contextual, and emergent nature of real-world skills and abilities. Any attempt to clarify or codify competence must be undertaken with a spirit of humility, provisionality, and openness to change.

Ultimately, the true competence for the 21st century may be the ability to continuously reinvent what competence means and how it is developed. It is the capacity to surf the waves of change with agility, adaptability, and resilience; to let go of fixed certainties and embrace a spirit of lifelong learning and growth. And it is the willingness to engage in the ongoing work of sensemaking and dialogue about the skills and capacities we need to co-create a thriving future.

In this sense, grappling with the competence paradox is not a barrier to progress but an invitation to deepen our understanding and sharpen our collective intelligence. It is an opportunity to reimagine competence not as a static endpoint, but as a generative dance between the known and the unknown, the established and the emergent. And it is a call to cultivate the mindsets and practices that will enable us to navigate an uncertain world with purpose, resilience, and grace.

So as you reflect on your own competence journey, consider:

• What are the enduring meta-skills and mindsets that can help you navigate an evolving landscape?
• How might you "translate" your existing competencies into new contexts and challenges?
• In what ways can you cultivate not just your own competence, but contribute to psychologically safe, collaborative learning environments?
• How can you approach your development with a spirit of humility, curiosity, and continuous growth?

By grappling with these questions, we can begin to chart a course through the competence paradox – not by resolving it, but by learning to dance with its complexities and possibilities. In a time of profound disruption, this may be the most essential competence of all.

#FutureOfWork, #LearningAndDevelopment, #LifelongLearning, #Employability, #AdaptiveLeadership.

This article was written with assistance from Claude 3 Opus, a generative AI developed by Anthropic

References and further reading for inspiration

Books

• Brinkmann, S. (2015). Stand Firm: Resisting the Self-Improvement Craze. Polity Press.
• Dweck, C. S. (2006). Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. Random House.
• Illeris, K. (2014). Transformative Learning and Identity. Routledge.
• Senge, P. M. (1990). The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization. Doubleday/Currency.

Journal Articles

• Le Deist, F. D., & Winterton, J. (2005). What Is Competence? Human Resource Development International, 8(1), 27–46.
• Michlewski, K. (2008). Uncovering Design Attitude: Inside the Culture of Designers. Organization Studies, 29(3), 373–392.
• Nagel, T. (1974). What Is It Like to Be a Bat? The Philosophical Review, 83(4), 435-450.
• Rittel, H. W. J., & Webber, M. M. (1973). Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning. Policy Sciences, 4(2), 155–169.
• Tanggaard, L. (2016). No recipe: Challenging the current fascination with the concept of competency. Nordic Psychology, 68(1), 1-6.
• Woolley, A. W., Chabris, C. F., Pentland, A., Hashmi, N., & Malone, T. W. (2010). Evidence for a Collective Intelligence Factor in the Performance of Human Groups. Science, 330(6004), 686–688.

Reports and White Papers

• Davies, A., Diemand-Yauman, C., & van Dam, N. (2019). Putting lifelong employability on the CEO agenda. McKinsey & Company.
• Deloitte. (2019). 2019 Deloitte Global Human Capital Trends. Deloitte Insights.
• Illanes, P., Lund, S., Mourshed, M., Rutherford, S., & Tyreman, M. (2020). Retraining and reskilling workers in the age of automation. McKinsey Global Institute.
• World Economic Forum. (2015). New Vision for Education: Unlocking the Potential of Technology. World Economic Forum.
• World Economic Forum. (2020). The Future of Jobs Report 2020. World Economic Forum.

Book Chapters

• Miller, R. (2015). Learning, the Future, and Complexity: An Essay on the Emergence of Futures Literacy. In Rethinking Education: Towards a global common good? (pp. 15-22). UNESCO Publishing.

Newspaper Articles

• Duhigg, C. (2016, February 25). What Google Learned From Its Quest to Build the Perfect Team. The New York Times.