A skills-based approach to bidding competency
Competency matrices? You’re probably doing it wrong.
We used to get away with drafting a job description, a training plan, or even a whole competency matrix based on what we know and what we did last time. That won’t fly any more. Technology’s impact on jobs is only flirting with us right now, but we all know the change will be profound. Future generations want more flexibility and variety, and they want to progress. So, we need to approach the skills and capability part of the bidding function in a more systematic way.
The disconnect in traditional competency frameworks
Traditional approaches, which rely heavily on job descriptions and role-based competencies, are often insufficient these days. Worse, they are based on what a company trying to sell you training says is important. Candidates are confused by what a Proposal Manager or Capture Manager does from their current employer to the next. Roles were decided 50-years ago in a different world. Levels of proficiency are either one-word labels you have to guess the measure (‘expert’, ‘capable’, ‘not bad at it I guess’) or different every time.
No wonder most efforts don’t fit what you and your team do. We need a systematic, skills-based approach to talent and competency that not only adapts to emerging needs but also aligns with globally recognised standards.
Historically, organisations have built job descriptions and competency frameworks on what they ‘know’ about a role, often relying on fragmented, role-focused views that don’t adapt easily, and if we’re honest with ourselves, are too-often based on what we did at the last company. This approach can miss out on key transferable skills and definitely overlook future demands.
The skills-for-a-particular-role are transforming rapidly, driven by technological advancements, generational shifts, and the demand for adaptability to survive. The idea of skills-based businesses arose a few years ago for good reasons, but it rarely seems to have filtered into bidding functions.
Why now?
With the release of the latest version of the Skills Framework for the Information Age (SFIA 9) that includes Bid and Proposal skills, now is the perfect time to consider a skills-based approach that is forward-looking, adaptable, and aligned with the latest global standards.
A skills-based approach shifts focus from traditional job descriptions to a granular view of the specific, practical skills needed to achieve business goals. By creating a framework for identifying, developing, and assessing skills across the business, organisations can ensure a strategic alignment with both current and emerging requirements. Here’s why this approach matters:
Anticipating future skills: AI (sorry, I had to mention it) is already changing the structure of roles by displacing tasks, augmenting complex ones, and increasing the demand for data skills. Skills like data literacy, adaptability, and knowing how on earth to work with AI are going to hit us all, requiring companies to keep pace. A skills-based framework will help you respond to changes but also anticipate them – you can define and adjust your competency framework at the same pace as technological and market shifts.
Leveraging internal talent: Unlike traditional job descriptions, a skills-based model allows you to identify internal talent with transferable skills. There could be a Service Desk manager with incredible presentational and motivational skills that could bring critical customer interactions to life. This is more than thinking a project manager may be able to run a bid – get down to the skills level. Give people a chance to grow and explore less linear careers inside the company.
Fair and transparent talent acquisition: A skills-based framework supports unbiased hiring by focusing on relevant competencies rather than years of experience in a specific role (people who’ve been driving for years aren’t always the best drivers). This approach provides a fair playing field for both internal and external candidates, helping you attract the right talent while promoting diversity and inclusion. Get some diversity of thinking and experience into your bid room.
So how do we move to a Skills-Based Approach?
You could start to define everything from scratch…or you could pick up a global standard to see if it can give you that 80% of the 80:20 rule. We work with a lot of technology companies, so SFIA is a language we speak already, but look at something like the World Economic Forum’s Global Skills Taxonomy as well. These frameworks provide a foundational 80% of the skills you need, giving you a starting point that’s relevant, standardised, and adaptable to your needs.
We like SFIA because it is jargon free, not proscriptive because skills are defined in their essence, and far wider than just core IT functions. It includes more generic Professional Skills we all need, and having the 7 levels of responsibility already defined makes the common language even stronger.
The Australian and New Zealand governments like SFIA so much they’ve got country-wide licences.
Yeah, but how?
Step 1: Pick a framework as your foundation
Take a look at widely recognised frameworks to see what would fit your organisation. There are bid-specific ones built by training companies out there, but that’s unlikely to have the across-company relevance that makes a framework useful or acknowledge the skills needs that are coming. SFIA is useful because it’s hard to find a role that is not impacted by the need for some digital skills now.
Starting with a framework ensures a common language and structure for defining and measuring skills, helping you avoid reinventing the wheel. SFIA also includes more generic attributes/behaviours and defined levels of competency/proficiency, so you don’t have to define them for yourself or hope the individual is assessing themselves consistently with their peers, and you are adopting a transferable language.
Step 2: Define the Jobs to Be Done (JTBD) for each function
In each function or team, determine the essential JTBD that contribute to the organisation’s goals. Let’s use an example function that handles securing new contracts. Within that function there may be a JTBD of managing a bid to submission. Remember this is not a job title – you may not have people called Bid Managers in the org, but you will have people who are responsible for getting a specific opportunity across the line – they have the role of a Bid Manager at that point. Some JTBD may map neatly onto job descriptions, but others will not – e.g. reviewing is rarely the only thing a reviewer does, but one of the JTBD in the function is reviewing proposals, and the people responsible for doing that need a certain set of skills.
Step 3: Identify skills for each Job to Be Done
Each JTBD needs a specific set of skills. In the bid management example, SFIA has a skillset that maps nicely (BIDM – Bid/proposal management) to the core skills, but most people performing the role will need other skills depending on your org – e.g. they may have to be heavily involved in stakeholder management (RLMT) or the development of methods and tools (METL). We use SFIA because it has most of skills you need in an office job world, and each one is already defined with relevant 7 levels of responsibility they are practiced at.
Step 4: Define expected proficiency levels
Once you have a bundle of skills for a role/JTBD, look at the pre-defined levels and set appropriate ones for the performance you need. You may already have seniority levels so you can map them across, or you may be starting from scratch to design an org so will have to use judgement. Frameworks like SFIA are built to be technology/methodology agnostic, so you can define specifics for your org – e.g. you may have bid graphics people, and SFIA defines the skills at different levels of graphic design but will not dictate which software is used, so you can specify Affinity Designer or an Adobe product.
Step 5: Assess your current team
You’ll quickly see how having the skills and proficiency levels defined means you can now assess your current team and create more targeted learning and development pathways as needed. No more guessing. Also, if you’re a fan of APMP certifications, APMG has mapped them to SFIA for you already.
This assessment could include self-evaluations, manager feedback, performance data, and skills testing. Whatever works for you and fits your company’s approach. By accurately mapping your team’s current capabilities, you’ll be able to identify critical skills gaps and areas for improvement.
Step 6: Forecast future skills needs
Forecasting future skills requirements is one way to make sure you don’t get left behind as the world changes around you. Think about what the company strategy will mean down at the team level, market trends, and external pressures coming from the AI-wave or elsewhere. Anticipating what may be coming means you’re more likely to be ready to support future needs, not just current ones.
Step 7: Develop a skills action plan
Once you’ve mapped out current skills and future requirements, you can develop a plan that covers:
Hiring: Attract talent to fill the gaps with specific, hard-to-find skills or valuable behaviours/attitudes that align with your organisational values. It should also help you find people with non-traditional career paths that will be a significant benefit to the organisation and may have been overlooked in the past because they didn’t have certain experience or funny war stories about printing proposals upside down that one time.
Learning and development: Offer targeted training programmes that provide a clear progression path, helping your team develop necessary skills and offering them the variety and development they demand. The generations coming through will leave if you don’t give them chances to develop.
Internal mobility: Enable individuals with transferable skills to move into roles where their skills can be best used. Win win.
Automation and augmentation: As you map the skills you may find opportunities to automate routine tasks or use technology to augment complex roles. New applications of technology appear every day, and understanding where they can be applied will speed up decisions and adoption.
Build a future-fit workforce
We would always encourage moving to a skills-based approach for any organisation looking to remain competitive, agile, and prepared for the future. By adopting something like SFIA 9 and following a structured, skills-first framework, you gain the clarity and flexibility needed to bridge current skills gaps, attract top talent, and prepare your team for the interesting challenges to come.
We’re always happy to explain how we do things, so get in touch.