Talent, MAP and a worsening crisis
by Miki Saxon
McKinsey’s report Making talent a strategic priority (requires free registration), the follow up to their 1997 study, War for Talent, is a must-read not just for CEOs of all size companies, but for every executive and manager—no matter their field or level. According to a McKinsey [executive] Quarterly global survey in 2006, “…respondents regarded finding talented people as likely to be the single most important managerial preoccupation for the rest of this decade.’
Another done in November 2007, ‘revealed that nearly half of the respondents expect intensifying competition for talent—and the increasingly global nature of that competition—to have a major effect on their companies over the next five years. No other global trend was considered nearly as significant.’
The study goes on to say, ‘Too many organizations still dismiss talent management as a short-term, tactical problem rather than an integral part of a long-term business strategy, requiring the attention of top-level management and substantial resources. “Everyone spends time on today’s business—we attribute very little value to doing anything else,” one European COO lamented recently. “Talent management puts you under strain because it stops you from doing what you are rewarded for.”
I’ve heard the same refrain for years and had the same reaction. But if you don’t consider taking care of your people your primary job then why you did you become a manager in the first place?
The solution to this is almost a no-brainer—tie a noticeable percentage of bonus compensation to carefully quantified, achievable talent management goals, such as improving retention and employee development.
McKinsey continues, “In our work, senior executives have frequently acknowledged their failure (and that of their line managers) to pay enough attention to these issues. Our research at scores of global corporations has highlighted the obstacles that executives face, including short-term mind-sets, minimal collaboration and talent sharing among business units, ineffective line management, and confusion about the role of HR professionals”
As with most things, successful talent management is a function of your MAP (mindset, attitude, philosophy™), which only you can really know—let alone change.
Read the article, objectively evaluate yourself and your organization (company, team or in-between) and then MAP out a plan for the future—but do it now.
What are you doing to attract and retain talent in your company?
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January 11th, 2008 at 10:51 am
I can’t seem to comment on your subsequent post but as my remarks apply to both I comment here ;)
My experience in terms of talent management is that it is not so much the strategy that is missing but the ability to evaluate talent. To make efforts to retain talent you need to be able to map existing talent to future needs and therefore evaluate both.
Given that in my experience:
managers are ill-equipped to evaluate how talented their staff is (lack of scale and comparison reference points),
managers fail to correctly evaluate the talent requirement of the positions they open and end up recruiting over or under talented people (and fail to correct it later on because they don’t realize it).
January 11th, 2008 at 11:25 am
Denis, You bring up an interesting point that really isn’t addressed in either post. The term ‘talent’ in the two posts is applying current usage of the word, i.e., talent is synonymous with human capital, human resources, people-we-hire, as opposed to skills or skill level and the ability to keep them.
Your comment is dead-on and brings up the problem of hiring well in the first place. I’ve written extensively on why hiring should be a core competency for all managers, which, alas, it isn’t. Check out Hiring and retention and the links it contains for information and help on this or send the links to managers you know who would benefit:)