With
advent of K- economy in globalisation making waves, corporations must now prepare their human capital to be K- professionals in competitive environment. K- professionals are not only just IT savvy alone. For individuals to be innovative and competent K- professionals, they must leverage on eight core competencies of a k-driven and self- directed professional to meet changing needs of K-economy.The eight core competencies are strategic thinking skills, knowledge responsibility, continuous learning, contribution in innovative teams, professional discipline, innovation and creativity, solution focus mindset, personal improvement.
These competencies with support of technology will enable a k-professional to achieve sustainable performance and ultimately competitive advantage for their organisation.
A structured identification exercise must be conducted to establish two major preferences in thinking - Left- Brained versus Right-Brained thinking. The Left-Brained thinkers tend to be factual and logical while Right-Brained thinkers tend to be intuitive and non-linear in their approach. For a K-professional to be thinking strategically, one must be able to stretch beyond boundary of their preferred thinking mode to achieve desired goals. Thus, whole-brained strategic thinking will enable a K-professional to address personal deficiencies and achieve strong conceptual mindset.
A culture of responsibility towards knowledge must be inculcated into their daily challenges of a K-professional. Firstly, K-professionals must constantly support their leaders, colleagues and peer groups with current and specialised knowledge by asking to whom am I accountable to for knowledge I have. Secondly, identifying people who can provide critical and valuable knowledge to assist me in getting things done by asking who is accountable to me for knowledge I need. And thirdly, developing a matrix to import knowledge from multiple sources by asking where knowledge can be acquired.
K-professionals must place key emphasis on a habit of continuous learning by constantly pursuing process of unlearning and relearning to exceed needs of a fast changing economy. They can do this by adopting philosophy of "Learning is about working and working is about Learning", and implementing real time action plan to translate learning into practice.
As K-professionals, contributing in objective-driven and self-organising innovative teams is critical for success of any K-organisation. Key skills such as self-directed co-ordination and communication will be inevitable to achieve desired team results. This means that a unified focus and ability to crystallise organisational knowledge are necessary to encourage knowledge sharing. Sharing of best practices will encourage culture of innovation and to avoid repeated mistakes thus creating a distinctive differentiation from competitors.
