Talent Bulk-Up
August 04, 2008
Strengthening your company's talent pool requires more than superb recruitment; you need talent development strategies that operate from the inside out.
By Caela Farren
Strategic planning and discussions of bench strength fill the plates of most managers and HR professionals. Do we have the talent we need for the future? For our strategic initiatives? To accomplish our mission? Who do we have ready for key positions and core projects? Where are we going to find the "right" people? Do they aspire to the same positions and projects?
One option for building talent is to promote from without. This is smart and useful as a feeder pool for maintaining a balance of talent in the early stages of careers, to fill gaps, or at the lower levels of mastery. However, promoting from outside at the highest levels of organizations often is fraught with danger.
As such, promoting from within is most often a better alternative. Doing so requires a long-term strategy coupling the organization needs with individual aspirations and talents. Performance overshadows politics. Mastery is the path. Slow, mentored practice tracks are the dojos for talent. Individuals choose certain organizations because of their reputations for excellence in one of the fields of their passion. No human institution is perfect, but the intensive practice provided in the military, sports, or the martial arts provide templates for assuring mastery in mission-imperative practice areas—professions and positions. Emphasis is on developing mastery, with the knowledge and expectation that years must be devoted to such a journey—for the individual and the organization.
There are definitely no magic answers in our quest for the "right" talent. But there are three strategies that help assure organizations have the bench strength required for the future:
Strategy 1: Mission-Centered Talent Mapping
Talent Mapping gives C levels and HR professionals a systems framework for building the organization as well as attracting, engaging, developing, redeploying, and retaining the "right" future talent. Every organization has its own DNA—the mission, strategies, professions, positions, and required skills sets or practices. These may be conscious or unconscious. But they're there. When we clearly articulate these, we have the basis for a robust talent management architecture. That is why the mission is at the center of Talent Mapping. All other choices radiate from the mission—strategies, professions, key positions, competencies, for instance.
While missions need to stay constant for a long time, strategies change more frequently. Strategies tell employees how they’re going to attain the mission—customer service excellence, speed, technical innovation, product innovation, or global reach. Strategies directly influence the "kinds" of people (professions or trades) that will be needed. Employees can see quickly whether their profession or trade is core or secondary to an organization, based on its strategies. Strategic initiatives change the concentration of time, energy, and required resources for a given year or more. Strategies drive the talent base requirements.
Talent Mapping Model
Given the mission and strategies of the organization, what professions and/or trades are imperative? (Ordinarily, each strategy will require a minimum of two or three professions or trades to succeed.) What expertise, knowledge, and skills must flourish to succeed strategically? Mapping strategies to professions/trades provides a great visual map for managing resources. (See the example above.) People can quickly see the entire "talent system" through this mapping exercise. Although there may be thousands or hundreds of thousands of positions, there are ordinarily a very finite number of professions or trades required for success.
Leaders need to maintain deep bench strength in core professions or trades and outsource or subcontract secondary professions and trades. Organizations become at risk when their core professions are subcontracted. They can lose the wisdom and expertise to make smart decisions in the implementation of their strategies. They can lose control of the staffing or development of their subcontractors. This may make short-term economic sense but not contribute to long-term organization health.
Positions and projects are simply arbitrary ways of packaging and compensating people for smaller skill sets or practice areas within a profession or trade. In finance we have bookkeepers, financial analysts, accounts receivable managers, accounts payable managers, budgeting managers, accountants, brokers, and investors. In small organizations, a professional might be required to have skills set from all of those positions. In large organizations, unfortunately, one can work for 15 years in several positions and never have practical experience in the whole set of financial practices and competencies required to be a master in finance.
Positions change frequently because new projects or new strategies evolve. The risk for both individuals and the organization is that the core professions become subservient to how we organize them into positions or projects. In many organizations, people identify much more deeply with their positions than their professions. This is a risk for individuals and the organization. Changing positions frequently requires changing professions. This must be done with a great deal of consciousness. Compensation schemes must be aligned first with professional mastery and then with positional level.
Strategy 2: Mastery-Centered Career Tracks
Professions and trades are the centerpiece for both organizational and individual career planning. Why? Because it takes 10 to 17 years to master any profession or trade. As such, organizations need to have a blend of workers in the four stages of mastery to assure long-term success: beginner/ apprentice, individual contributor, mentor/coach, master/leader.
The dilemma facing many organizations is that successful people get promoted too quickly into management, and never have the time to develop mastery in the basic practice areas of their profession or trade. Although a person has the positional designation or role of leader, he or she may not be at the top of his or her game. Having multiple career tracks where people can choose to stay with their profession and still accrue increased compensation and other perks is still a major challenge for many organizations.
The first step to making mastery-driven career tracks a reality is to develop a picture of the current talent base and then decide how to fill any gaps that show up through intensive development programs, mentoring, and smart acquisition of talent. Subcontracting may be a partial stopgap, but has potential limitations as a long-term strategy. It’s critical from a succession planning/talent management standpoint to look at every profession or functional area and outline the positions, basic practices, and skills required for mastery in that field.
Being true to the distinction of master—best in class; known throughout the profession; disseminator of new ideas and processes; teacher of aspirants—is very important for the long-term health of organizations. What would happen if organizations determined they would take on the talent gaps by starting alliances and partnerships with the local grade schools, high schools, trade schools, and universities in a ten-year program to build the talent base they require for the future? What if the school/work distinctions were continually bridged by professionals and trades people who loved their craft and were helping the organization by growing the future? This is what the masters of old did. This process is revered in the military services and martial arts. Go to any esteemed Dojo and the masters are developing the next generation of masters. Teaching is part of the mastery process.
Leaders and their HR partners have a dual responsibility to: 1) Show the professions and key practices required for mastery; and 2) Reward depth in the core professions and trades through well-designed career tracks for the individual as well as the organization. They need to also continually monitor each track to assure they have people in each level of the mastery track.
Strategy 3: Individual-Centered Professional Development
Our spirits or souls are the source of our uniqueness—our DNA. Our uniqueness comes from this life force. We are each unique with wonderfully different and complimentary talents. Getting to know ourselves deeply provides the individual roadmap to choosing the professions, organizations, industries, and positions where we will flourish:
• Our style of being—how we interact with the world and others.
• Our passion and mission in life—our calling.
• Our interests—the sources of joy and aliveness.
•Our values—what we really care about, what's important.
• Our skills—what we can do in life, innately, or with practice and coaching.
• Our knowledge—what we learn and apply to life, work, and world situations.
Having worked with hundreds of thousands of individuals for more than 30 years, my key message is: Be yourself! Know yourself! Build from your unique talents! Start from the inside out! Radiate from your interests, values, and personality style. Build your competencies! Choose the profession, industry, organization, and position that "fits" you and inspires your learning and development. Unique talents and strengths can come from inside of us—the unique way we are hard-wired.
Having offered a thumbnail sketch of three strategies to help organizations build talent from the inside out, take a look at your existing talent management strategies. In addition to the suggestions above, check to see how you stack up on the following tactics:
• Reward individuals for being "talent scouts" inside and outside of the organization.
• Check your retention rates by mastery level and see where you have the most turnover.
• Make lateral moves easy and frequent within professions—harder across professions unless deliberately chosen.
• Tie individual development plans to strategic initiatives, so people have a sense of how their position impacts the whole organization.
• Assure individual contributions are publicly linked to strategic initiatives.
• Make mentoring a way of life and an expectation of all.
• Focus on mastery and help each person see where they are in their mastery journey.
• Make professional mastery more important (rewarded) than positional levels.
Take a step now and commit to one of the above. Engage your colleagues in the process of working from the inside out. Use all three strategies. They work.
Caela Farren is CEO of MasteryWorks, a provider of career and talent management services. To learn more, visit www.masteryworks.com.
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