Eraut (1998) has argued that the socio-cultural definition of competence as ‘meeting other people’s expectations’ has a longer provenance than more recent individual-focused definitions. It also raises the important socio-political question of whose expectations are to count and allows for changes in expectations over time, thus making competence a moving target. The last thirty years have seen a huge growth in the use of ‘competencies’ as a language for describing individual performance; but they can also be used as descriptions for group or organizational performance. This paper will argue for an approach, in which the idea of treating statements of competence as facts is abandoned. The alternative is to treat them as mediating artefacts and to construct discussions around them in a manner that enhances mutual awareness of how well an agency will be able to successfully handle or learn to handle the strategies, plans or decisions that formed the object of the discussions. It may also lead to some modifications to the artefact. The advantage of this more nuanced approach is that more situated factors may emerge that indicate how further learning might improve the quality of performance by extending the domain of current competence.