A competency is measurable and can be developed through training, which is what separates a framework from a list of virtues.
Why it matters when the plan changes
A competency model is the closest most organisations come to writing down what good looks like, and it is what assessment, interviewing and promotion are all calibrated against. That makes its accuracy load-bearing. Competencies are built to be measurable and developed through training, which is what makes the model usable rather than aspirational, and why a model written for the previous strategy makes every downstream process rigorous about the wrong thing.
The tension is between stability and relevance. A framework is valuable partly because it is consistent across the organisation and over time, which is precisely what stops it tracking a plan that has changed. Rewriting it for every shift destroys comparability; never rewriting it guarantees drift. Most organisations choose drift without deciding to, in the same way that Sull, Homkes and Sull found most managers do not believe stated priorities are actually resourced: the mismatch between plan and practice sets in below the level anyone reviews.
In practice
A group shifts from regional autonomy to a product-led model. The competency framework still rewards local decisiveness and relationship ownership, so promotion continues to select for the behaviour the old structure needed. Two years later the leadership bench is full of people chosen for a strategy the company has left.
Evidence
A competency is measurable and can be developed through training, and can be broken into smaller criteria.
Competency (human resources), Wikipedia (2026)Most managers do not believe stated strategic priorities are resourced, which is the same drift a stale framework produces at role level.
Donald Sull, Rebecca Homkes and Charles Sull, Why Strategy Execution Unravels and What to Do About It, Harvard Business Review (2015)
What it cannot tell you
A competency model describes what an organisation says a role requires, not what the current strategy actually demands unless someone checks the two against each other. It cannot tell you whether the list has kept pace with change, and a well-run process built on a stale framework will look rigorous while selecting for the wrong behaviour.
Questions
A well-defined competency names observable behaviour rather than a quality, and according to the Wikipedia entry on Competency (human resources) (2026), it is measurable and can be developed through training. Integrity and drive fail that test as written; giving difficult feedback within a week passes it.
Whenever the plan materially changes what roles have to do, which is more often than most frameworks are reviewed. Sull, Homkes and Sull, writing in Harvard Business Review in 2015, found that only 11% of managers believed their company's strategic priorities were fully resourced; a stale framework produces the same gap at role level.
Partly. A common core supports comparability and mobility, and roles genuinely differ in what they demand. Most workable models keep a small shared set and allow role-specific additions, rather than pretending one list describes both a plant manager and a head of product.
The framework says what the organisation wants; the assessment measures what a person brings. Calibrating the second against the first makes the results usable, and it also inherits any error in the framework, which is why the framework's accuracy is worth checking first.
Drift. The framework stays fixed while the strategy moves, so hiring, promotion and development continue selecting rigorously for behaviour the current plan no longer needs. The processes look healthy throughout, which is why the failure is usually noticed at the leadership bench rather than in HR.