The A in KSA is for Abilities or Attitudes or Attributes?

The atomic level of skill and competency models is sometimes referred to as KSA. This is the level that Ibbaka’s skill graph is built on. In the current chatter about skills from Josh Bersin, Deloitte, LinkedIn and other commentators there has been a general recognition that skills are the connective tissue that links learning, job architectures, teams and many other things to outcomes.

This linking of KSAs is important. Individual KSAs take on meaning in context and the context is provided by how they are linked or aligned to other things. This is so important that at the IEEE 1484.20.2 Defining Competencies work group there is a whole section on alignments and integrations. The alignments include everything from Goals and Outcomes to Learning, Organization Structures (such as Job Architectures or Social Networks), Credentials and Microcredentials.

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What does KSA stand for?

the K is Knowledge and the S is Skills. There is a general consensus on this.

Knowledge

Knowledge: “facts, information, and skills acquired by a person through experience or education; the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject.” (from Oxford, interesting to note that skills are subsumed under knowledge in this definition)

Knowledge is the things we know and can recite or even teach to other people. Knowledge is in the head. Most conventional learning is concerned with conveying knowledge and not skills. Most representation systems are more concerned with knowledge than they are with skills or the performance of a skill.

Skills

Skill: “the ability to do something well; expertise.” (from Oxford)

Skills are what we can do. Some say they are applications of knowledge but this seems too narrow to me. Skills are learned primarily by practice, and in many cases by mirroring what people who have the skill do. The Japanese have a word for this. Minarai 見習. If you have taken a martial arts class, and learned your kata, you have been learning skills through minarai.

At Ibbaka we chose to call the KSA level of our system ‘skills’ rather than something more general like ‘elements’ or even ‘KSAs.’ We made this choice to focus on performance, as that is what most of the people and organizations that use Ibbaka are concerned with.

What is the A in KSA? That depends on who you ask. A could be for Ability or Attitude or Attribute. What does KSA mean for you?

We polled a number of groups on LinkedIn and got diverse reactions. The same is true when we reached out to other people who work in the skill and competency field. What are the arguments for each interpretation?

A is for Attitudes

Attitudes: “a settled way of thinking or feeling about someone or something, typically one that is reflected in a person's behavior.” (from Oxford)

Attitudes play a big role in performance. One can have all the knowledge and skills necessary but with the wrong attitude it can be hard to get performance. A lot of what Ibbaka categorizes as Social Skills are Attitudes, things like Listens to Others or Seeks Out Alternatives. Many Foundational Skills (the skills used to build other skills) like Curiosity could also be considered Attitudes.

Many government organizations, like the European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training (CEDEFOP) use the A is for Attitudes approach..

A is for Ability

Ability: “possession of the means or skill to do something.” (from Oxford, skills show up here as well)

I had trouble understanding the A is for Ability framing until I listened to Eric Shepherd, the head of Talent Guild. I had been thinking of Abilities as the individual’s ability, which seemed to me to be the outcome of KSAs rather than a KSA itself. Eric described Ability more as the ability to act. One can have the right attitude, the knowledge one needs, and the skills to apply it but still lack the ability to act because of environmental or situational limitations. The best striker in the world will not be able to score if the ball is kept a long way from the net or if her teammates will not make the pass.

I am still thinking about this, and the extent to which competency models can and should set out the overall context needed for performance.

A is for Attribute

Sometimes you have something you need to document that you know is critical to performance but is not obviously knowledge or a skill. Attitude is too narrow a term to cover all these situations. Some people use attributes to cover these other, relevant constructs.

Attribute: “A quality or feature regarded as a characteristic or inherent part of someone or something.” (from Oxford)

In competency design work, these sort of general categories can be useful and quite often, after enough work, order emerges from having open categories.

At Ibbaka, we generally use A to mean Attitude. The triad of Knowledge, Skills and Attitudes covers most of what a competency statement needs in order to describe successful performance. We can add other constructs to models as needed. We frequently include behaviors in our models, and recently have had customers that need to include experiences. Jobs, roles, tasks and activities also show up. And then our skill categorization system does have a category for ‘other.’ When enough things accumulate in ‘other’ we have a signal that the model needs to evolve.

So which of the three As makes the most sense to you? Attitudes. Attributes. Abilities. We will be continuing this conversation.

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