Recently, Next Level Purchasing (now the Certitrek NLPA) published “The Purchasing Leader’s Guide to a More Successful Team” that outlined Seven Steps For Improving Skills and Getting Better Results. Noting that many organizations only have one or two superstar team members that can handle the most challenging projects, that a purchasing department should be the organizational center-of-excellence, and that there’s no reason your entire team can’t excel, Charles Dominick, President & CPO of Next Level Purchasing put together a simple seven step process that any organization can follow to improve their team. The document might not cover every possible thing that one could do, but it’s a great start as any department that effectively implements and masters the steps provided will certainly be above average as a result.
The seven steps outlined by the document are:
- Document Departmental Goals
- Identify the Necessary Skills
- Develop a Methodology to Assess Skills
- Determine Skill Gaps
- Define a Skills Development RoadMap
- Improve Skill Levels
- Measure & Sustain Improvements
They are important because:
- It’s hard to identify necessary skills without goals.
- Once you’ve identified the skills, you can identify who should have them.
- You need to know how competent your people are with respect to each required skill to assess gaps.
- You need to know what the gaps are in order to identify appropriate training.
- The roadmap helps you identify which skills are important.
- Skill level improvements are accompanied by improvements in sourcing results.
- Measurements let you know how effective each skill level improvement initiative was and helps you select the “training” that is most appropriate for your team.
And you should definitely download “The Purchasing Leader’s Guide to a More Successful Team” because:
- It gives you some examples of the right way to state measurable goals.
- It outlines common skill dimensions that you should be sure to consider.
- It defines three different skill assessment methods.
- It tells you what’s important when it comes to skill gap identification.
- It describes five different ways you can prioritize professional development.
- It outlines different ways you can improve skill levels.
- It gives you some ideas for measuring skill improvements in a manner that can be communicated to management.