The Competency and Ambition Equation
February 21, 2014.
A number of management theories treat ambition as a competency. This thinking then finds place sometimes in interview or assessment processes where ambition is seen as a criteria for selection.
The point I want to argue is that ambition is not a competency but on the other hand one needs to be competent to deliver on his or her ambition. So ambition is on the other side of the competency equation.
Competency itself need not be measured as an individual’s competency but the competency of the team that is to deliver on a goal. The audacity of the goal itself is dependent on the ambition of the the person setting the goal.
Competences needed could be more generic, like leadership, resiliency, communication skills etc., or they could be more specific to the situation or industry. Like in software industry it is design, technical, coding skills. And competences could be inherent to an individual or could be something that can be developed through training & experience. For the purpose of this discussion though, the definition of competences is not important. A general sense is good enough.
A case where ambition is lower than the competency, one would find under achievement. That could be obvious but what is more relevant is what follows. I would argue in almost all such situation frustration or depression or cynicism would set into the individual. It is incredibly hard to find a situation of satisfaction, positive energies, general sense of achievement and happiness around such an individual. This negatively affects everyone around at both personal as well professional levels.
The opposite of this where ambition is more than the competency is also a common occurrence. In such cases the goals or responsibilities the person takes over are more than the person or his/her team can deliver. As the results start to be below the promise, a typical reaction is excessive aggression and placing of blames. It is never me who is the issue but the other person or the other team is not delivering or not cooperating. A cycle of bad decisions will start which will further deteriorates the situation. This creates bad environment in form of lack of teamwork, constantly changing plans and often strained relationships.
So the trick is to find the harmony and balance between ambition, responsibilities and competences. This may not be perfect all the time. The idea is to understand and recognize the patterns. With understanding comes the ability to make adjustments towards balance.
I also want to touch on few other related aspects. One is this phenomenon of “taking risk” by setting goals which seems out of reach to start with. This is not the same case as misplaced higher than competences ambition. Firstly, ambition has a very personal theme to it while taking risk for the team / or the organization / or greater good has a different context. Second, true leadership requires taking what is called calculated risk as that is driven by the sense of the personal or team competency which is more than what is apparent. In that sense it is really taking the position of creating balance between the goal and the competency that exists, moving it from the position of under achievement.
Second idea is the measuring success through lens of others. This is the case where you would find lot of folks around you or you yourself being driven by expectations others have of off you. These others could be your close family, friends, college mates, colleagues or in some cases just the rest of the faceless world. Just because you were born in some situation, or went to certain college or have some assets or had some success people just expect you to be doing / or going after things that you yourself may not necessarily be looking to do. This social expectation is hard to resist and one may just comply or rebel or just casually ignore depending on personality. I would say loudly that please let people be and let them make their choices in life as and individual rather than being a clone of previous choices. But this is not the topic of my writing today as this case should not be mistaken for high or low ambition.
Third is the case of satisfied living. This is not low ambition at all. Few among us are happy with the state of affairs in terms of career or money or such things. Others may just be prioritizing their lives in terms of more time for children at the cost of their career growth. This in my opinion is a case of different shade of ambition. Ambition here is expressed in terms of achieving balanced life or detached life or mindful life in spiritual terms or something else. I would impress upon you that to me this is in fact high ambition and requires a higher level of competency to get the balance.
My goal for writing this article at some level was to express my observation of struggle almost all people have including me in achieving this balance. Recognizing the imbalance is the first step to restore harmony. I may be oversimplifying the many nuanced situations people find themselves into and would be happy to get feedback to develop this idea further. But I do believe power lies in simple answers. If you have read so far than thanks for being with me and I am hoping you found something to think about.
