Competency Project - Phase II (May, 2002 - Dec, 2002)

 Competency Project - Phase II (May, 2002 - Dec, 2002)

IFF Competency Profile Project

Draft Proposal for the next Phase

Presented at the 2002 Assembly
by Rob Black & Markus Riesen
Feb, 2002

Nov, 2002 update:

Assembly participants gave feedback in two ways: (1) some participated in trying a draft (in English) of the questionnaire mentioned at the end of this article; (2) some participants were unclear and uncertain about the strength of the methodology. This feedback, plus the responses to the questionnaire, were discussed at length with our Consultant. As a consequence, the questionnaire in German has a much more robust flow and is easier to do. Of course, this was only possible due to the participation and excellent feedback from Assembly participants).

Introduction

At the 2001 Assembly in Kassel, a simulation of one approach to collecting information about a profile was practiced. This resulted in a very interesting "profile" of the reflections of these participants while they were doing FI. This somewhat informed us about the strengths and weaknesses of the methodology called DACUM and also gave some hints about the strengths and weaknesses of the Task Analysis methodology.

Following the endorsement of the IFF Competency project by the Assembly, the Competency Profile group reviewed the methodology and processes, plus the feedback. The Competency Profile group began the process of being very practical about how a Competency process might develop.

The Board planned its mid-year meeting to co-encide with the America Conference (FGNA) in October. This would have allowed several non-American Board members to attend the FGNA Conference. Further, we had arranged to present our Academy and Competency ideas at the FGNA Conference in October. Unfortunately, the events of Sept 11/01 changed these plans, for our European and Australian were not able to travel. Consequently, the Competency working group was not able to meet face-to-face and begin planning. (However, a meeting was later arranged in Munich, as a kind of update and final tying-up meeting).

The Competency Profile group had numerous on-line discussions and some telephone meetings. At this time, a San Francisco-based management consulting company (Catalyst) offered their on-line services to the Board for free. As we began to become comfortable with the service, we began to develop concepts in a collaborative way on-line. The outcomes of these on-line collaborations were a series of short topics that have now been drawn together into this larger paper, which was presented at the 2002 Assembly. We are, of course, aware that this paper is in "draft" format, somewhat unfinished, but nevertheless useful for identifying some important directions.

We also were acutely aware of the need for an external "specialist". (The TAB's process had demonstrated the immense value in this). Thus, a significant task was the search for a consultant who was interested in the uniqueness of our Method. We also wanted someone who was aware of the different approaches to thinking about Competency between the continents. Of course, we also hoped to find someone nearby one of us. We were fortunate to gain the services of Dr. Walter Goetz of Zurich.

Methodology Revision. Through discussions with Dr Goetz, it became clear that we were not ready for implementing our intended methodology, a Task Analysis. The Task Analysis requires fairly sophisticated understanding of the processes to be viewed (and reviewed). This certainly affirms a concern voiced at the IFF Assembly, 2001.

Language and Culture. A second consideration was the scope of the project -- language and cultural considerations. We had begun to see that we had two major cultural groups with potential cultural differences -- the European guilds and the English-speaking guilds. As we considered the possible implications, we had initially thought we should have two parallel processes with two consultants, one from North America, and one from Europe. Dr. Goetz clarified for us that this was a very significant project which would consume a great deal of time and money. He suggested that we scale the project down to a more manageable size. Perhaps starting a first approximation with one language group then working within this language to begin to understand the complexities of the project.

We compared the two largest language groups in the IFF: English and German in terms of access to potential participants, the apparent interest of the associated Guilds (to apply support to the process) and also the access that the organizers had to the potential participants. This led us to the conclusion that the first approximation would be most easily accomplished with the help of the German speaking Guilds.

New Methodology
Our first task is to get as clear a picture of the practice of the Method as possible. One process that has been useful with other professions is called "Critical Incident" or "key Situation". The process would be as follows:

Practitioners write a scene or event that might happen in one's practice of the Method. This is the "Key Situation". Given this key situation, practitioners identify what a beginning practitioner might do, and what an experienced ("competent") practitioner would do. Then, the two actions are compared with a kind of inquiry such as, "How is it that there is a difference?" or "What qualities are in this difference?" Although we may not be able to clearly articulate how we practice the Method, we have a sense of congruence in our actions. Thus, we can generate situations a practitioner may find him/herself in, and we can begin to suggest actions of beginning and more advanced practitioners.

Key Situation - concept 1

This model provides depth of analysis through the second-order consideration of what processes, knowledge, skills, or values underlie the difference between the two actions.

When we repeat this model a number of times with different Key Situations, what will emerge will be very rich information about how we practice.

This then forms the theoretical basis for the next step. The next paper(s) outline the considerations regarding the actual methods to collect the information.

Begin with German Speakers: +/-

We were advised (by our Consultant, Dr. Goetz) to start in a single language. The benefits include:

• Avoid the concern that the result will be culturally-specific
• Simpler, less confusing in terms of the initiation, analysis and discussion
• Reduces strain on finite resources (e.g. no translation costs, printing, mailing, organizational time)
• reduces the range of distracting information due to misunderstandings of the purpose, directions, etc.

Advantages and disadvantages of beginning the process in German are as follows:

Methodological Questions

In order to begin to collect the information using the Key Situation approach, we developed a number of questions about the "best" method of collecting the information.

Regarding the way in which practitioners are involved with the process:

The standard method for collecting the information is to arrange to have a group of practitioners sit for a period of time (e.g. 2 days) and for the whole group to create a number of Key Situations, then add the actions, then do the analysis. A single group of practitioners may not provide sufficient variety, and so a number of these groups would need to be formed. A group that formed in this fashion could fit very well into the kind of workshop that the Academy is developing for the feet.

There are a number of difficulties with this approach, the chief one being the time required to organize the groups. Another consideration was that the membership of the groups may not be representative of the whole possibilities of the Method.

A Complete Mail-out Method was considered in which all German-speaking practitioners would be sent a letter inviting each to do the whole process and return it to us.

An Iterative Mail-out Method was also postulated. In this method, the German-speaking practitioners would be sent a letter inviting them to write a Key Situation and return it to the Competency Committee. These raw Key Situations would then be analyses for content and themes. From this analysis, a number of Representative Key Situations would be written and these would be mailed to practitioners, with the request that they do the process with as many of the Situations as they find compelling.

Regarding the actual time representation:
In our diagrams we have represented two different times in the development of a practitioner, "beginner" and "advanced". We wondered if these were the most useful terms to use. Thus, we considered the following:

Absolute Reference. Perhaps practitioners would find it very easy to describe their actions Upon Graduation and currently. Would they be able to accurately describe what they did when they graduated? Would there be meaningful differences between the two actions? What if there were practitioners in the sample who, in fact, were recent graduates? how would they respond?

Relative Reference. Alternately, practitioners may be able to respond to the Key Situations if they thought of themselves at one time "less experienced" and then aat another time, "more experienced" (which could be some time in the future).

Comparison of the Methods

Comparison of the Time responses

Current Plans

Following the February meeting of the Academy in Munich and the Competency meetings in Zurich, we (Markus and Rob Black) had hoped to begin piloting some of the ideas and procedures in Switzerland. Unfortunately, there has been insufficient time for us to continue these activities.

Recommendations
As of May, we (Rob and Markus) are now much more aware of the requirements to continue this project.

Requirements: