A business briefing on talent management that I deliver to organisations- if you are interested in having this briefing I would be delighted to hear from you
Transparency – How transparent is the talent management system? Fully transparent through to nobody knowing it even exists. Size of talent pool – How many people are considered to be in the talent pool? 1% through to everyone. Permanency of definition – How permanent is the labelling of talent? Once talent through to the label of talent being transient. Decision Process – How many people are involved in deciding who is classified as talent? Just the line manager through to distributed decision making of some form. Entry Criteria – How easy is it to meet the criteria to enter the talent pool? Very easy such that anyone can be considered at any time, through to very difficult where certain criteria need to be met to qualify for entry. Recruitment as a source of talent – Where are key vacant roles recruited from? All internal candidates through to all external candidates.
Performance Management – How is people’s performance measured in the organisation? Outputs/outcomes or inputs/behaviours. Talent management processes – To what extent are the systems and structures supporting the talent management system understood? Explicit structures or implicit structures. Use of technology – How central is the role of technology in supporting the system? IT independent through to IT dependent. System flexibility – How static is the application of the system? Prescriptive and static through to evolving or changing. Ownership of talent – Where is talent owned in the organisation? Local ownership in business units through to shared ownership around the organisation.
You’ll recall that the study indicated that people perform at a superior level when they are matched to the work they do. If you think about your own experience and your company’s own superior producers, I think you’ll conclude you all fit your jobs. If you didn’t, you couldn’t sustain your level of performance <CLICK> Superior performers can deal with the mental and intellectual demands of their positions. They can handle whatever level of information processing is required of them in the position. This is true of all superior performers. Why, even what you might consider the lowliest position, it has some requirement for the person doing it to handle some level of information effectively. And however “lowly,” if the job wasn’t important, it wouldn’t exist. <CLICK> Superior performers have personalities that allow them to be comfortable in the environment of the position – interacting effectively with their colleagues and clients – and meeting the challenges of the position, head on. <CLICK> Finally, superior performers tend to be people who are interested in the work they do – and because they are interested, because they get something from the work, they are much more motivated to be successful. They want to do the job well. <CLICK>
Remember Jenny Sample? We saw earlier that she differed from your Top Performers in that she had a much lower Manageability score – suggesting that she might be more resistant to authority than your top performers. Last time we looked at Jenny we were assuming that we were considering placing her in this position – and the report analysed how she differed from the top performers and produced a tailored interview plan to probe those differences. Now, we’re assuming that she is already employed in this position, but that we want to move her performance up a notch – to that of your top performers. So, the report provides the same analysis of Jenny against your top performers – but then provides specific management and coaching actions you can employ to help Jenny to raise her game. You get detailed coaching and management suggestions for every area in which Jenny is different from your top performers. Jenny is different to your Top Performers, and if you manage her as you would them, then you’ll get different results. This report tells you how to get the very best from Jenny in this position. And you can have this information for ‘every other Jenny’ in your organisation – so that you have specific action plans that will help improve every individual’s performance in every position in your organisation. This overcomes the ‘one size fit’s all’ approach to development that is so frequently unsuccessful <CLICK>