Using Competency Ladders to Simplify Product Engagement

Competency ladders can help guide your point of view on product engagement and build empathy for your customers.

I’m fascinated by a good story about high-engagement product usage. Working in the product design and product strategy world, we know that every product’s success depends on some portion of customer attention and engagement. In conflict with that desire is the fact that there is often a mismatch of how often customers want or need to use a product vs. how often the product provider wants them to use it, and to what depth. Simply put, there are often unfair expectations projected onto customers.

This article and exercise are intended to empower product teams to arrive at a grounded understanding of what their customers are capable of, and how to scaffold them into increased, realistic product adoption that aligns with company goals. Some customers will make it to the level of a power user. Many will not. Hanging the fate of your business on power-user adoption is a risk that can be mitigated. This exercise focuses on structured competency analysis to highlight that there is value to deliver at all levels of the customer experience, even if they stop short of power-user status.

Through this exercise, it is likely that a new sense of empathy will emerge that will (hopefully) impact future decision-making. There are two easily replicated framework sketches to create a customer scaffolding plan:

1. A competency map, which serves to build empathy for your customers
2. Competency ladders that inform the scaffolding (several examples)

Building a competency map breeds empathy

This exercise requires a willingness to assess the entire product experience with an open mind—from a customer’s point of view. Valuable information (and validation) can be discovered through audits like the one that I’m offering. Hopefully, the findings will bring with them an opportunity to discuss current assumptions and consider if new and/or different tactics should be considered on behalf of the desired business outcomes.

Do you have great answers to these questions?

If yes, then you will most likely find validation in this exercise. For those who don’t have great answers, this exercise will help you move closer to great answers that teams can align on.

• What value are we delivering to our customers?
• Do we understand how to get them excited about that?
• Where must we start to “scaffold” them into the product or service? (Do we fundamentally understand how learning works?)
• What is the center point of all interactions? Where must the customer start (in order) to understand what the product or service does?
• What are the nearest interactions that build upon that core? …and the next layer that builds upon that?
• When you chain these together, where do they lead? What value does this add? Should we invest (or divest) in this?

Interlude: “Do we fundamentally understand how learning works?”— A simple flywheel for learning.

In its most distilled form, learning is about (the learner) building confidence through exhibited competency (experience), which fosters curiosity and a willingness to tackle the next “unknown” thing. That is the flywheel at the core of this article and what I am hoping that you learn through this practice. It’s about empowering people to believe that they can learn on their own.

Learning flywheel

Build your empathy map

Step 1: Create your (radar) workspace.

In your favorite physical or digital whiteboard tool, sketchpad, or whatever visual thinking space you prefer, create a set of concentric circles forming what looks like a radar. The number of rings will be specific to your product so start with 5–7 and adjust from there. I ended up with seven rings for the exercise that I last ran.

Step 2: Label the rings.

Work from the inside out, increasing in required competency. they are enumerated for sequencing. I have intentionally not included the number in the label itself. #1 is the innermost ring:

1. Core ability
2. Critical ability
3. Confidently exploring
4. Learning to extend concepts
5. Confidently exploring power user capabilities *
6. Expert practitioner-driven use cases
7. Organization-driven use cases (optional)

Step 3: Set the (one) core capability.

What is the most basic, fundamental capability that your customer must start with to understand all other abilities that follow? What is their starting point?

In my example, I am using a digital whiteboard product and I have placed, “Add a sticky note” at the center.

Place a sticky note with your answer, based on your product, at the center of your radar.

Step 4: Populate the rest of the radar.

Continue populating the rings—radiating outward from the core—with the capabilities that you expect your customers to engage in. It won’t be perfect or make complete sense in the first go. Just get them down and move them as necessary. You’ll want to talk through it with others, solicit feedback and iterate upon until it makes sense for everyone involved.

Eg. Change the text in a sticky note, Change the color of a sticky note, Connect sticky notes, Add items to the outline, Select a template, Etc.

Step 5: Turn your tactical labels into value statements.

Now that you have tactical capabilities captured, I want you to add the hidden “value” of the ability to the sticky note. Adding a sticky note is not the value proposition. Being able to “quickly capture, build upon or dispose of ideas” is the value of the defined capability. Now go through and try to reframe all of the capabilities into value statements. Keep the capability on the sticky as you add the value. You can always just add another sticky over the capability as well. Dealer’s choice!

Note: Make a copy of your initial set of abilities before converting them. You want the initial stage preserved.

Competency ladders

From the core capability you now want to start looking for the nearest related action that can be built upon and learned. This is when to ask, “What are the nearest abilities that build upon the learned ability (eg. adding a sticky note)?” Note that most actions will connect and some will not. Sometimes new ladders need to be started, but they more often than not will lead somewhere. Very few actions stand alone. So, start drawing connecting lines outward for the actions.

Chain these basic capabilities/value statements together with arrows to create a “ladder”.

1. Create a sticky note (Quickly capture, build upon, or dispose of ideas)
2. Create multiple sticky notes (Quickly capture, build upon, or dispose of ideas)
3. Attach sticky notes with connectors (Show that ideas are related)
4. Group objects (Easily associate and move objects as one thought)

With this set, you can now ask the team, “How are we intentionally architecting a learnable experience that helps customers move from the first rung of the ladder to the last?”

Then go back to the core question and apply it to where you stopped, “What are the next fundamental abilities that build upon this learned ability (grouping objects)?” Repeat the process until you’ve reached the “expert-level practitioner” ring.

Branching “ladders”

There are multiple “ladders” that can stem from the core ability, more that follow each path and some that connect.

Within the example below, there is a ladder (2.1) that branches off of “connecting shapes”. Once a customer can “Connect shapes / sticky notes”, the likelihood of them feeling comfortable with “Mind mapping” has increased, while you can also consider introducing how to “group objects” from that same exhibited behavior (connecting shapes).

Example competency ladders

An alternate plot. Applying context.

When plotting out a version of the radar, I found that I wanted to challenge the context of when the capabilities potentially had their greatest amount of practical impact. So, I created an additional plotting structure to graph out the capabilities based on Scale of Impact vs. Required Competence

For whom and when is this capability valuable?

This view helps me look at the information in yet another contextual view that makes me think differently about my assumptions as I’m thinking about the audience target for each capability. I also find that this more constrained view allowed me to see relationships faster. I like to combine these organizing methods to make sense of things. You are welcome to use them in isolation or in combination.

In summary.

When you find the rhythm of how this exercise can benefit decision making for your product experience, you can influence engagement by intentionally, and logically teaching customers how to gain confidence in the product by connecting to their work, on their terms, through your product. Always meet customers where they’re at and support their ability to make informed, confident decisions from there. By doing so you will undoubtedly gain a greater appreciation for their experience and for what your product has to offer them.

Having established this practice, you can leverage the ladders to inform in-app guidance, lifecycle marketing, and the design of engagement metrics. In a follow-up article, I’ll offer how you can attach these ladders to an engagement metric framework.

I hope you got something valuable from this article. If you did, or didn’t, let me know in the comments below! If you have any questions about applying this to your organization message me on LinkedIn.