Competency frameworks, as we explored in The Problem with Competency Frameworks, often fall short because they are too rigid, overly prescriptive, and structured more for HR compliance than for real-world professional growth. In contrast, a capability-based model offers a more fluid, dynamic, and contextual approach.
Rather than a strict checklist of competencies, this model provides a mental framework that individuals can use to navigate their own development. This is particularly crucial in the age of GenAI, where knowledge is abundant, and success depends on knowing the right questions to ask rather than simply having the right answers.
Why a Mental Model Works Better Than a Competency Checklist
Instead of prescribing detailed competency levels that professionals must meet, a mental model provides a flexible structure that helps individuals:
Understand the stages of their own development — not as rigid steps but as evolving levels of expertise.
Make sense of their experiences by linking what they do daily to larger professional activities.
Ask better questions that guide their learning and adaptation in a world where AI can provide many answers but judgment and decision-making remain human strengths.
This model is not just about individuals; it also contextualizes work within organizations, acknowledging the relationships between primary and secondary domains — a critical nuance often ignored by traditional competency frameworks.
The Mental Model: Three Pillars of Career Development
This framework is structured around three interdependent pillars:
You: Foundational Capabilities (Cognitive, Emotional, Social)
Your Professional Activities: What You Do in Work
Your Expertise: The Domain Knowledge and Decision-Making that Shape Your Role
Each of these elements evolves through career levels, creating a continuous growth journey rather than a static competency list.
You: Foundational Capabilities (Cognitive, Emotional, Social)
At the core of professional success are three dimensions of intelligence:
Cognitive Intelligence: Critical thinking, problem-solving, decision-making, and adaptive learning.
Emotional Intelligence: Self-awareness, resilience, adaptability, and self-regulation.
Social Intelligence: Communication, collaboration, influence, and leadership.
How This Evolves Across Career Levels:
As individuals progress in their careers, these capabilities mature in complexity and impact:
This model acknowledges that career growth is not just about acquiring technical skills but about how a person applies thinking, emotional resilience, and social engagement at increasing levels of responsibility.
Key question to ask yourself: Am I developing the cognitive, emotional, and social intelligence required for the next stage of my career?
2. Your Professional Activities: What You Do in Work
Rather than dividing work into arbitrary competencies, this model recognizes that all work revolves around five core activities, which appear at different levels in every role:
Strategizing — Imagining and shaping the future.
Creating — Designing and producing solutions.
Engaging — Helping others make decisions, managing relationships.
Supervising — Aligning work across multiple streams.
Executing — Getting things done efficiently and effectively.
How This Evolves Across Career Levels:
Each career level expands the complexity of how these activities are performed:
Instead of rigid competency checklists, this framework provides a guiding structure that allows individuals to reflect on where they are and what they need to develop next.
Key question to ask yourself: How am I growing in the professional activities that define my work?
3. Your Expertise: Domain Knowledge and Decision-Making
Every profession requires domain expertise, but rather than treating knowledge as static, this model acknowledges that expertise develops over time and varies in complexity and scope:
Primary Domain — The core discipline of your role.
Secondary Domain — The adjacent knowledge areas that influence your work.
Organizational & Industry Context — The larger environment within which your work exists.
How This Evolves Across Career Levels:
Understanding primary and secondary domain relationships helps individuals navigate how their expertise interacts with others’ expertise in an organization.
Key question to ask yourself: Am I deepening my domain expertise while broadening my awareness of adjacent disciplines?
Shifting from Rigid Competencies to Career Navigation
Instead of using competency frameworks as bureaucratic checklists, this model helps individuals and organizations:
Understand career growth as a journey, not a set of requirements.
Develop capabilities holistically, beyond rigid job descriptions.
Enable individuals to navigate their own growth, especially in a GenAI-powered world.
In a world of infinite information, success belongs to those who know what questions to ask.
So, what questions are you asking to advance your career?
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