Knowledge, skills, and attitude (KSA) concepts

(happy music) - KSA stands for knowledge, skills and attitude, and these are the three requirements for change management when dealing with people who will undergo the change, i.e. the impacted users. Let's briefly review each aspect. Knowledge is often described as book learning, and refers to cognitive understanding of what the stakeholder is required to do, and how they're required to do it. The reason that it is sometimes referred to as book learning is because increasing knowledge is the traditional role of academic organizations such as schools and colleges, and because knowledge is, or at least was, generally transferred through books and lectures. Having an understanding of what needs to be done generates the ability for the person to think and act independently, rather than having to be told what to do by a supervisor at every stage of the performance of a task. Knowledge is therefore particularly important in jobs that require autonomous decision making by the person involved, such as in sales, customer service, or consultancy roles. Skill is the ability to perform a task adequately, and this performance ability tends to increase in quality over time as more experience of performing the activity is gained. Different types of tasks have more or less of a skill-related component. For example, tasks requiring precise brain-to-body motor skills, such as dentistry, or forklift truck driving, will tend to require a high level of skill, which in turn requires at least a degree of on-the-job-style training to be completed before a person gains the desired skill. Because skill cannot be taught through books but through experience, it tends to be taught in situ by coaching and or mentoring, rather than just by instructing. For example, think about how you might teach someone how to swim, or how to ride a bicycle. Attitude is the emotional and personality-related aspect of capability. Regardless of how knowledgeable and or skillful a person might be, if their attitude towards performing the task is wrong, they will either perform the task less well than otherwise, or even not perform the task at all. Emotions that might negatively affect a person's attitude towards performing a task might include ignorance, not understanding why it's important, for example, anger, caused for example, by feelings of being unjustly imposed upon by being ordered to perform a task, and fear, perhaps due to feelings of insecurity around the ability to perform the task sufficiently well, and concerns about being sanctioned in some way if they cannot do so. An individual's personality will at least to some extent dictate the level of impact the attitude may have to the performance of the tasks they're asked to perform. People with high emotional IQs and mature personalities will be more likely to need less support with attitudinal problems than their counterparts with lower levels of emotional IQ and less maturity. Customer success managers need to ensure that all three aspects of KSA are given careful consideration for every user who will be impacted by the upcoming change, and that the adoption plans that are created contain the right mix of communication, training, testing, measurement and ongoing support, both practical and emotional, for each user group that will enable them to succeed in the performance of their new tasks. (bright music)