Not so long ago, a technical person would have remained a techie all through his life and would have been mighty happy too. They were mighty pleased with coding, coding and coding, little or no supervision or co-ordination to handle.

The new generation techies are a different lot. They want to be off from coding as quickly as they can. In fact, several leading ITES organizations prefer such people. Some of the companies are laying so much of an emphasis on this aspect that they want these young people to develop multi-skills and become "client manager" and handle a "client account" by themselves.

A fair enough challenge for youngsters, but what all do they need to think off in case they have to look at futuristic challenges..

The skills can be mainly classified into three main categories Technical - Business - Behavioral.

This is a list of twenty-five basic competencies, including six technical, nine business-based, and ten behavioral. You can use this list to carry out the competency analysis just described for jobs in your organization.

Although this list is unlikely to fit every organization, it can serve as a useful starting point. Regard it as a guide from which you can develop your own tailored set of competencies.

Once you've identified a short list of the competencies that really make a difference for a given role and described each one at four levels of performance, you've created the role profile for that job. A role profile identifies the competencies and corresponding performance levels required to fulfill that role satisfactorily. Don't set unreasonable or unnecessarily high standards. You are better off selecting just the competencies that truly make a difference and set performance levels that are high, but not supremely demanding.

Technical

- Understanding existing systems and technology
- Designing and developing applications
- Applying procedures, tools, and methods
- Integrating systems
- Designing technical architecture
- Understanding emerging technologies

Business

- Understanding business practices and approaches
- Understanding business organization, policies and culture
- Behaving commercially
- Understanding and analyzing the competitive situation
- Managing projects
- Managing change in the business from IT applications
- Planning, prioritizing and administering work
- Communicating/listening and gathering information
- Focusing on customers

Behavioral

- Leading, inspiring and building trust
- Thinking creatively and innovating
- Focusing on results
- Thinking strategically
- Mentoring, Coaching, delegating, and developing
- Building relationships and teamwork
- Influencing and persuading
- Principled negotiating
- Resolving conflicts and problems
- Being adaptable

Managing is no longer the rough, tough, macho game it is still often pictured to be. It has become a delicate, sometimes dangerous, often subtle relational dance, perhaps more akin to courtship than to rugby.