Designing a Simple Career Development Framework

Achani Samon and I spoke to dozens of African startup executives over the past few months, as we scouted for talent problems to help them solve. We decided to write about the themes we heard during these calls. We hope these articles would serve as refreshers or mini-guides that any manager or leader can share with a team member to help them get a high level understanding relatively quickly.

Overview

A career development framework provides clarity and consistency around expectations for competencies at each career level, alignment to company values, and individual performance.

Career development frameworks include 3 main components:

• Values and competencies for the organization or team
• Career levels within the organization or team
• Mapping of the values and competencies to career levels

Designing a career framework

Defining values

Organizational values are the beliefs that guide how companies behave, in order to achieve the broader company goals and create the kind of work environment we desire.

Defining competencies

A competency is the ability to apply knowledge and skill to deliver a task or activity. There are 2 categories of competencies - functional and cross-functional.

Cross-functional competencies

Cross functional competencies include general aptitudes across 4 categories:

• Problem-solving: the ability to conceptualize and frame problems, and develop effective solutions that can be successfully implemented
• Communication: the ability to convey messages that create clarity, understanding and persuasion (verbally or in writing)
• Self-management: the ability to organize one’s time, energy and emotions to be effective and productive
• Leading and managing others: the ability to effectively inspire, motivate and direct individuals or teams to maximize their effectiveness and productivity
• Collaboration: the ability to work effectively with others outside of your direct sphere of influence or control

Functional competencies

Functional competencies are specific to a role, function or department in a company. They involve:

• Knowing how to do things i.e. the ability for a marketing professional to create an email campaign
• Knowing how to use the right concepts, frameworks, methodologies and tools i.e. the ability to use Mailchimp

Competencies by career level

The end result of this exercise is essentially a mapping of competencies for each career level, which can be used to provide employees with a pathway to growing at their current level, as well as visibility into what it takes to advance to more senior levels.