Mark Bennett
Meg Bear
Louise Barnfield
Amy Wilson
Ravi Banda
Kathi Chenoweth
Ken Klaus
Justin Field
Vivian Wong
Sal Taharim
Ariel Ceballos
Jayavel Bharathi
Hitesh Shah
Alex Drexel
Marcie Van Houten
Namita Panigrahi
Keshav Subramanya
Talent Management should be more like a Speed Bag.
Posted by Amy Wilson on November 18, 2008
You may recall that I recently took up boxing. True, the very first thing they had me do was jump rope. But, in that same session, I was also introduced to the speed bag. I was terrible, ridiculously terrible. At the same time, it was fun and rewarding. I improved exponentially just by a little practice and when I hit that bag, I actually felt like I was boxing! It gave me gratification before all the hard work that was to come.
So, that’s it. I realized that for years now, we have been talking about talent management in the context of delayed gratification. Eat your broccoli and then get your dessert. Create your job competency model, then standardize your performance process, connect all of your talent-related silos, and then maybe, just maybe you can start doing strategic things like succession planning and workforce planning. Gulp. Doesn’t that sound great? No wonder every company is stuck at the beginning. It’s hard and the reward is nowhere in sight.
So, how about if we start at the end, instead? Let’s have some of that dessert first to justify the need for broccoli. Let’s punch the crap out of that speed bag to inspire us to jump rope, do sit-ups, and wince as we pound our fists into a punching bag. Let’s make it easy and rewarding to look at talent strategically – to look at where we need people, where people are, where they should go, and so on. Let’s make it easy first. Then, let’s get started on the hard stuff. How can we improve the quality of the data? How can we automate the sourcing and integrating of that data? How can we do even better at strategic talent management?
Forget what your parents taught you … it’s all about instant gratification, folks!
Meg Bear said
you are so right. Getting some useful, tangible results quickly is exactly what Talent Management is looking for, especially in today’s tough economy. Let’s go get some dessert!
William said
The point of breaking something down in to smaller portions is a means of improving quality. You can get some sort of satisfaction, but experiencing the full reward isn’t the same. Put this in terms of a development group. The intended outcome is a product or service. With people, time and resources at stake, what makes an arduous, non-instant-gratifying journey manageable are “milestones”. Such way points, when coupled with compensation, are quite clarifying and rewarding. There doesn’t have to be just one pie, there can can be many. HR could learn a few things from peers in their organization.
John Holt said
Totally agree Amy – IG is what engages line managers to allocate the really smart parts of their brains in the process as useful effort applied to generate more momentum in business agenda as opposed to compliance.
Amy Wilson said
Thanks John! I agree, of course. Allowing managers to see the value to their business first before the effort is much more likely to engage and build momentum.
The Accidental Successor « TalentedApps said
[...] 2. The accidental successor – this is a person who would take the job tomorrow if the incumbent was hit by a bus. The organization could limp along indefinitely with this person at the healm. It’s easy to put this person’s name on the succession slate – there’s really no work involved. They could do the job (sort of) and there’s no development necessary. Wasn’t that easy? Who said succession planning was hard? [...]