Continuous improvement is critical for building business capability

Growth: Leaders should commit to lifelong learning to master skills

Does your business have the right capabilities to cut through in a cluttered market?

Continuous improvement is critical when it comes to building business capabilities.

While the capabilities a leader needs to learn or refine are similar each year, leaders need to commit to lifelong learning in order to keep up with everevolving market changes.

However, investing time building capabilities alone is not enough to guarantee success.

Leaders must ask themselves: What are the habits that successful leaders display over and above just capability to translate them into success?

A survey by global learning and development organisation, Mindshop, shows coaching and developing people has become the top skill needed by business leaders in 2018.

In the survey business leaders and advisers from around the world highlighted the need for businesses to build skills in talent management to ensure employees can respond quickly to changing market conditions.

Mindshop surveyed more than 160 business leaders and advisors in nine countries providing valuable data and insights to highlight the top capabilities and highperformance habits needed for business success in 2018.

How can you build skills in talent management?

The number one way for a leader to free capacity was by “improving the quality of your team” and “keeping good team members” was the top concern for business leaders.

Leadership was another skill in which business leaders wanted to invest time during 2018.

Great leaders have the ability to drive change in fast-moving markets, empowering staff to achieve their best by leading by example.

However, the survey highlighted that central to this is the need for a business to implement and uphold a fantastic culture and conduct decision-making through the lens of core values.

Management consulting firm Mckinsey and Company found that on average, businesses which implement effective capability-building programs as part of their talent management programmes beat the odds.

Their transformations are 4.1 times as likely to succeed and derive 2.2 times the benefits than those of other companies.

They also found upgrading skills and capabilities is fundamental to develop digitally-enabled business models and complete with new and agile competitors.

In response to its survey findings, Mindshop proposed businesses carry out a capability audit and identify what they need to improve to stay relevant.

Building capabilities is a journey not a destination and business leaders need to recognise the importance of investing in continuous learning for employees to keep their business relevant.