After the Paper “Capitalizing on Capability” by Dave Ulrich and Norm Smallwood, there have been a flood of articles about capability audit on the internet. Many people are explaining how to do it and one can find lot of literature on the topic, even some case studies where people have successfully conducted a capability audit and achieved excellent results.
Capability audit deals with intangibles. Thus it is very pertinent to error and must be done very carefully without bias. I did a capability audit for an organization and realized that there are few important points that one must keep in mind while conducting a capability analysis.
The most important thing that I felt was to remove the bias from the audit, and only then we can have a true picture of the current capabilities of the organization and point out the correct areas for improvement. Usually while conducting such audits we tend to forget certain stakeholders view points. This would give us a skewed picture of the true curve. I would consider a capability audit conducted only when it is conducted 3600. This would not only give us different perspectives but would also point out some of the facts that can be left ignored otherwise.
Next most important thing I found was prioritizing the list. This has to be done with consultation of the Top Management and is probably the most crucial part of the audit. At this juncture the data is converted into goals, thus it is very important to choose the top “few” capabilities which are of highest importance and are in line with the constraints and resources of the organization. I highlighted few because going after many capabilities could be disastrous.
Lastly, intangibles are comparatively ignored while assessing the performance of an organization and the irony is that they are the driving force that pushes us to achieve those tangible targets. We should make sure that they are not ignored and as said in the paper we should try to make a virtuous cycle of investment and assessment.
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