CORPORATE LEADERSHIP

COUNCIL®
™
Competency Prioritization and Customization
Questionnaire

PURPOSE: Business leaders can use this questionnaire to prioritize company-wide competencies and customize behaviors to the businesses’ unique functional
and/or regional needs and challenges. Answers to the questions in tab 2 can be used to produce customized communications that ensure relevance of
competencies to business leaders’ activities.

CONTEXT: Organizations can ensure greater focus on behaviors that lead to business outcomes by increasing the “local” relevance of competencies through
prioritization and customization. The process of leaders localizing messages for their teams, known at Cisco as “tropicalization," allows them to translate
competencies into business-driven expectations and emphasize certain competencies over others to achieve specific objectives and surface gap areas.

(To access the associated best practice, please click here.)

INSTRUCTIONS:
▪ Step 1: HR fills in the organization's competency model in tab 2 ("Questionnaire") and distributes this tool to business leaders.
▪ Step 2: Leaders use the tool to customize competencies to the unique needs and objectives of their business, function, and/or region.
▪ Step 3: Leaders cascade communication around the customized competencies to the business.

SOURCES:
Cisco Systems, Inc.; Corporate Leadership Council research
 CORPORATE LEADERSHIP COUNCIL (C)

Competency Prioritization and Customization Questionnaire

INSTRUCTIONS:
Use this questionnaire to prioritize company-wide competencies and customize behaviors to your businesses’ unique function and/or regional needs and challenges.
Answers to these questions will help you to produce customized communications that ensure relevance of competencies to the activities of the leaders within your
business.

Questions for Business Leaders:

Function/Business Unit Name: Date:

1. What are the core business objectives for this group?

2. What do business leaders need to do in order to achieve these objectives?

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 CORPORATE LEADERSHIP COUNCIL (C)

Competency Prioritization and Customization Questionnaire

In the table below, your organization-wide competency model and the behaviors associated with each competency have been filled in for you in the first two columns.
▪ In question 3, indicate the importance of each organization-wide competency for your group's business leaders to achieve its core business objectives.
▪ In question 4, describe how (if at all) the behaviors defined for each of the organization-wide competencies must be changed for them to be relevant to your leaders'
activities.

3. How important is this 4. How would you operationalize or modify the

competency to executing your behaviors associated with this competency within
Competency Organizationally-Defined Behavior
group's objectives? your group to ensure relevance to your leaders'
(see your response to Question 2) activities?

[HR: input competency from [HR: input competency behavior from

organization-wide competency
model]
[HR: input competency from
organization-wide competency
model]
[HR: input competency from
organization-wide competency
model]
[HR: input competency from
organization-wide competency
model]
[HR: input competency from
organization-wide competency
model]
[HR: input competency from
organization-wide competency
model]
[HR: input competency from
organization-wide competency
model]
organization-wide competency model]
[HR: input competency behavior from
organization-wide competency model]
[HR: input competency behavior from
organization-wide competency model]
[HR: input competency behavior from
organization-wide competency model]
[HR: input competency behavior from
organization-wide competency model]
[HR: input competency behavior from
organization-wide competency model]
[HR: input competency behavior from
organization-wide competency model]

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 CORPORATE LEADERSHIP COUNCIL (C)

Competency Prioritization and Customization Questionnaire

[HR: input competency from
organization-wide competency
model]
[HR: input competency from
organization-wide competency
model]
[HR: input competency from
organization-wide competency
model]
[HR: input competency from
organization-wide competency
model]
[HR: input competency behavior from
organization-wide competency model]
[HR: input competency behavior from
organization-wide competency model]
[HR: input competency behavior from
organization-wide competency model]
[HR: input competency behavior from
organization-wide competency model]

4. Communicate this ranked and customized version of the organization-wide competencies you have completed in Question 3 to your business leaders to ensure
that they understand how they are expected to achieve the group's core objectives and the behaviors on which they will be evaluted.

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