The field of talent management faces an interesting challenge. We should be fully equipped to solve any talent issue.

Yet, when corporate executives are surveyed about the state of their company’s talent, they’re decidedly unhappy. McKinsey, Deloitte and Boston Consulting Group each have found executives disappointed with the quality and depth of their company’s talent and its processes to build more. There seems to be a gap between our potential to deliver results and our actual impact.

Bridging that gap is the key to our long-term success, and we have a potentially powerful tool at hand to drive organization success — the behavioral competency model. If well-constructed, it should tell employees which behaviors are essential for corporate success in a simple and emotionally compelling way. Unfortunately, that’s an infrequent result. What’s not working?

The science behind competencies is extremely thin. Talent practices such as performance management rely on a strong foundation of academic research; competencies do not. Before we start development, we should define what we’re trying to accomplish. The purpose of competencies is to ensure employees’ behaviors support the business strategy. With that as the objective, we should identify the simplest possible way to achieve it.

Value must outweigh complexity. Managers are willing to use an HR process only if it adds more value to their life than it does complexity. That’s why the 12-competency, four-level, five-descriptors-per-level competency model is dead on arrival at most companies. That type of model might add some value, but it completely overwhelms managers, so they ignore it or do the minimum necessary to comply. Maintaining the value/complexity balance is your secret to designing a competency model that really works.

Create an effective competency model. Remember your business goal to ensure that employees’ behaviors support the business strategy. Then, do the following:

Listen to your senior team. Interview your top team members using one simple question: Which three behaviors are most critical for our success in the next three to five years?