We all like to think that we are competent enough to do what we set out to do on a daily basis, be it helping customers solve their problems or being able to communicate what needs to be achieved or the merits in doing so.

The same goes for any product or service. The competency of which (if clearly defined) can be the difference between success and failure. Product accreditations as well as certifications, especially when awarded through an impartial third party (such as a BBA Agrément Certification) can help highlight core competencies and be the differential between you and your competition.

But what about you?

Are you competent?

Here are some common mistakes we ALL make that will test anyone’s competence.

How many have you made?

Sending that inappropriate text to an unintended person

There is nothing like saying something, or indeed typing something, that cannot be taken back. Be it an incorrect figure or a statement that was meant for someone else. It always pays to check the recipients details twice to avoid this incompetency.

Forgetting the Birthday of someone important

There are only 365 days in a year and around 7.6 billion people living on planet Earth, so of course everyday will be someone’s Birthday. More competent people will write their nearest and dearest’s date of birth down or use a website to set reminders, so they don’t forget. Even then, some may slip through the net as friends change and family members come and go.

Driving off with something on top of your car (probably a coffee or a phone)

There will always be moment of forgetfulness, those momentary lapses of concentration that lead to missing keys or walking into a room and forgetting why you entered, but leaving an item on top of a vehicle and then driving off is more common than most people would expect, especially in a society that is time strapped.

Agreeing to crucial “terms and conditions” without reading them

With most of the services we use today there will be a long (yet very small) list of statements that we are agreeing to meet before using such a service. These terms and conditions are very rarely read, due to their length and the time it would take, but how do you know what you are actually signing up to? You’d expect a competent person to be more diligent!

To highlight this fact, experiments have shown that people still blindly click that green ‘I Agree’ button even when statements such as ‘agree to clean toilets for 41.7 days’, ‘scrape gum off of sidewalks’, and ‘hug stray pets’. are buried in the T&C’s!

As you may have gathered by now, competency is a tricky thing to get right all the time; we’re all human after all (except the bots/spiders that are crawling this article so that Google can index it).

Fortunately, for non-human entities it is much easier to define their competencies, through a robust process like Certification, that determines its fitness for purpose. That’s why our Agrément service offering has been defined; an independent, thorough process conducted by teams of highly experienced individuals, to define and verify a product’s competency. And to strengthen that service offering even more, our Installer Schemes have been designed to strengthen and verify human competency in the work they conduct, to remove help mitigate risk and drive quality throughout the built environment.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/regajha/mistakes-you-will-make-at-least-once

https://www.wisebread.com/13-embarrassing-mistakes-everyone-makes-but-doesnt-talk-about

https://blog.ashampoo.com/en/2017-07-25/the-big-unknown-terms-and-conditions-t-c