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O
ver the years, I have had the good
fortune of interacting and working
with amazing people. During this
time, I have also read extensively on the
topic of building people and creating an
environment that fosters growth. This has
enabled me to develop the Competent
Team Player Model that looks at the
following key areas:
• Competence: What do people need to do
their jobs; and
• Teamwork: The virtues required to work
effectively with others
Competence
Competence can be broken down into
capability (which can be something
measured in timespan) and skill.
In fact, the concept of capability is based
on the work of Elliot Jacques, a Canadian
psychoanalyst, social scientist, and
management consultant.
With that being said, timespan can be
defined as ‘the length of time a person can
effectively work into the future, without
direction, using their own discretionary
judgement to achieve a specific goal’.
From a Synthesis perspective, we look for
people who either have a large timespan or
have the potential to develop their timespan.
The second element of being competent is
that of skills. A person might well have the
capability to perform a specific role, but if
they lack the skills then they will not have the
opportunity to display this capability.
Skills can include technical knowledge and
practice. For example, the skill of driving
a car requires someone to know the rules
of the road. However, a person also needs
to practice their driving skills. In Malcolm
Gladwell's book, Outliers, he highlights how
a person would require 10,000 hours (10
years of constant practice) to master any
reasonably complex skill.
In software development, this could be
translated into a traditional career approach
where a person would progress from being
a junior, then intermediate, and ultimately
a senior developer. This would be followed
by becoming a team lead, architect, project
www.intelligentcio.com
“
Jake Shepherd, Director at Synthesis
AT SYNTHESIS, WE
SEE A CAREER AS
AN OPPORTUNITY
TO CONSTANTLY
PICK UP NEW
SKILLS AND THEN
APPLY THEM
IN PRACTICE
WHERE THE OLD
SKILLS REMAIN
RELEVANT.
manager, and so on as the person progresses
up the ladder.
This ladder approach is something totally
alien to Synthesis. It does not make much
sense to constantly ‘promote’ people into a
role that they may not enjoy and may well
be ill-equipped to handle.
Instead, at Synthesis we see a career as an
opportunity to constantly pick up new skills
and then apply them in practice where the
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