Capacity Development: Upskill Staff to Advance Organisational Excellence
Duration: 2 hours
Price: R195.00
Capacity Development: Upskill Staff to Advance Organisational Excellence
Presenters : Liezel van Arkel
Overview
Organisations often respond to performance challenges by asking what training their people need. While skills development is important, organisational excellence requires a broader question: what does the organisation need to be capable of doing well, and what is currently getting in the way?
A useful starting point is the distinction between capacity and capability. Capacity considers whether an organisation has sufficient people, time and resources to deliver the work required. Capability considers whether its people have the knowledge, skills, judgement and behaviours needed to perform that work effectively. A practice may have highly capable people but insufficient capacity to meet its workload. Equally, adding more people does not solve a capability problem.
The distinction matters particularly in professional practices, where highly skilled people are often also responsible for managing clients, allocating work, developing junior staff and keeping work moving. A perceived capacity problem may sometimes require additional resources. At other times, capacity can be released by simplifying processes, using technology and automation differently, delegating more effectively or reconsidering how work is allocated.
The video therefore encourages practitioners to diagnose before they develop. Rather than beginning with available courses or generic skills lists, capability development should begin with the work and the organisation’s priorities: What does our practice or function need to be able to do well? What capabilities does that require? Where are the most important gaps? Which of those gaps are genuinely skills issues, and which are created or reinforced by the way work is organised?
Capability itself extends beyond technical expertise. Professional effectiveness may also depend on capabilities such as judgement and decision-making, client engagement, communication, collaboration, digital fluency, problem solving and people management. This becomes particularly important when technically strong professionals move into management roles and are suddenly expected not only to perform their own work, but to achieve results through others.
The video also challenges the assumption that developing capability primarily means sending people on training. Formal learning has a role, but much professional capability is developed through work and through other people: exposure to more complex assignments, feedback, mentoring, observation, collaboration, delegation and opportunities to practise new skills. Managers therefore play an important role in creating the conditions in which development happens and new capabilities are applied.
Finally, the video moves from individual capability to organisational capability. Employing capable individuals does not automatically create a capable organisation. Structures, processes, technology, role clarity, management practices, collaboration and the working environment can either enable people to use their capabilities or constrain them.
Practitioners come away with a practical way of thinking about capacity and capability in their own practice or professional function, identifying priority gaps and considering where development effort is most likely to improve organisational performance.
Video Content
- Capacity or capability? Diagnosing the real challenge: Distinguishing between constraints created by insufficient people, time and resources and those arising from gaps in knowledge, skills, judgement or behaviour - and recognising when the problem may lie elsewhere in the organisation.
- Start with the work, not the training: Identifying the capabilities that matter most by considering what the practice or tax function needs to deliver now and in the future, rather than beginning with a generic list of courses or competencies.
- Looking beyond technical expertise: Considering the combination of technical, business, interpersonal and management capabilities required for effective professional performance.
- Developing capability through work: Moving beyond formal training to consider how experience, stretch opportunities, feedback, mentoring, peer learning and deliberate practice contribute to capability development.
- The manager as a capability builder: How work allocation, delegation, feedback, expectations and opportunities to practise can accelerate - or unintentionally inhibit - people’s development.
- From capable people to a capable organisation: Examining how structures, processes, systems, technology and ways of working influence whether individual capability translates into organisational performance.
- Prioritising the next capability investment: A practical approach to identifying the few capacity or capability constraints that warrant attention rather than trying to develop everything at once.
Competencies Developed
The video helps practitioners strengthen their ability to:
- Distinguish between capacity, capability and broader organisational performance problems before selecting an intervention.
- Identify the capabilities most important to the current and future work of their practice or professional function.
- Look beyond technical competence when considering the capabilities required for effective professional and managerial performance.
- Identify and prioritise capability gaps rather than defaulting to generic training solutions.
- Recognise opportunities to develop people through work, feedback, exposure and relationships as well as through formal learning.
- Examine how management practices and the organisational environment enable or constrain people’s ability to apply their capabilities.
- Make more deliberate choices about where investment in capacity and capability is most likely to improve organisational performance.
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