1. Part One: The history and purpose of talent management: What is it? Does it matter? Has it now been shown to be an effective identifier for HR?

Do we need to understand the roots of talent management to really use it? Maybe not: but some understanding of the causes and reasoning are helpful so that we don’t see talent management as simply a development tool that enables good workers to be profitable or a set of tools to retain intellectual capital and knowledge capital. There are wider issues to do with more tangible business processes and to do with creating a long-tail solution to succession planning and leadership pipelines.

Most will point to the origins of talent management as being Softscape CEO, Dave Watkins, who in 1998 published a newsletter on an IT tool they had developed called Lightyear. The paper was entitled: “An appliation framework for talent management that acts as a central feedback center for all organizational functions.” It never mentions recruitment or enabling talent as we now think of it, but most agree, it is the first known use of the phrase. However, the origins of talent management as a sytematic approach to competence-based HCM (Human Capital Management) is far more complex.

Any system in OD can be open or closed or both: this is important. For example, school children needing a hall pass are in a closed system, but do not need to ask for pencils (the organisational culture dictates they should have one with them). Feedback systems were developed in the 1930s by Kurt Lewin and others to ensure that closed systems reinforce positive messages in learning and development (a learning loop) and open systems meant that feeback was actually taken on board as culture changes for the better. From this we get a host of feedback systems all of which try to get the employee to give an honest evaluation of what would make their job better. Currently we are using 360° reviews, and coaching and mentoring programs.

Kurt Lewin [1890 - 1940]

This makes one half of the equation: the human feedback or loop.

Approaching fast from another angle are the quality and statistics gurus, like Walter A Shewart, whose Learning Cycle make Lewin’s methodologies measurable, and George Box, a statistical genius at business costs, and of course, Deming. Deming believed in TQM: total quality management. His work in Japan led to the 5 s approach: clean, clear, uncluttered, no waste, on demand manufacturing and those qualitites where human-based and human-driven. A great and under-rated example of this is Yoshio Kondo’s Total Employee Involvement (TEI).  Kondo simply advocated that the time was coming when quality would equal employees committment. And, that that committment would be tied to their involvement and not simply to rewards. His ideas around the need for creativity while applying TQM (Total Quality Management) are, if anything, more relevant today than they were in 1989 when he published Human Motivation: A Key Factor for Management.

Both approaches, the feedback loop and the quality approach were productive, but they needed a synthesis.  It all culminated in the publication in 1990 of an extraordinary book that literally changed how companies saw HR. Peter Senge’s The Fifth Discipline: the art and practice of the learning organization not only called for this seismic shift and just in time for the internet boom, but gave people all the tools they needed to implement the process.

The Fifth Dicipline showed different ways to do three things: firstly, to “foster aspirations”, secondly, to “create reflective conversations” and finally to “understand complexity”. These was achieved by the five disciplines: firstly, develop “personal mastery” and vision, secondly, examine “mental modes” and the assumptions of any organisation, thirdly, build shared vision, fourthly, get the team “genuinely thinking together”, and finally the fifth discipline is “systems thinking”, an amalgamation of all of these. It also advocated awareness of laws that would help and hinder the process. It was, and still is, enormously influential, and even though it failed to see recruitment, leadership pipelines, and networking per se it hints at all of them. Most of all though, Senge is highly intelegant: simple, intelligent, and elegant in his exposition and thinking. Here was a book everyone could follow - and many did.

From this we get not only the Learning Organization (one that listens and takes on board it’s own information) but also the idea that man management falls short: there is capital in the ideas and feedback of workers. While Senge cannot take credit for the idea of Human Capital, the opening of systems meant that seniors in the company has already seen bottom line value in their workers ideas rather than just their productivity; but the from Taylorism and army developed ideas of IQ and command and control into new frontiers of Howard Gardner’s frames (How we think about problems determines how we choose to solve that problem) and Goleman’s work on EQ and Emotional Intelligence and so on complete a very important change in work: from a manufacturing and industrial worker to the knowledge worker.

All of these factor led in the 1990 to re-engineering and out that came the idea of Intellectual Capital. The best analogy I can think of for intellectual capital is a computer: the computer loses its value as a commodity from the moment you buy it, but the information it holds, its equity, is worth much more than the computer itself. This is true for us too: our knowledge and experience within an organisation cannot just be transferred to a new employee, we learn culture, we know more than just facts, look at the human realtionships and networks for a start. Business Week in 2006 had a great story about a maintenance manager in London who was given a S-Class Mercedes by the CEO. They had replaced him after 15 years with a subcontracted firm, witihn eight weeks they couldn’t work the heating, make the plumbing work, or find out why the air conditioners weren’t working. Smart guy: good intellectual capital!

Intellectual Capital’s leading exponent was a Swede working for Skandia, Lief Edvinsson, who had in turn taken on board the groundwork laid by a fellow Swede, Karl-Erik Sveiby and Hiroyuki Itami’s excellent Mobilizing Invisible Assets, published by Thomas W Roehl in 1991 it led to the idea that the ideas people had were as much assets as any machinery, land or inventory. While hardly a new ide
a in iteself it did provide a way to quantify on the balance sheet the intellectual capital of a company.

Hiroyuki Itami

So now we have all the parts of one side of the equation: listening and evaluating, quality systems and intellectual capital. The other part of the equation was very simple: employers needed brains, and so, the hunt for talent was on. Like racehorses, if you could find the best early on and develop some way of making them stay, the potential profits were huge.

The talent process was initially just a way to hunt for graduates before they sent off their CVs. From the Universities came the Milk Round, where top companies looking for top recruits could have a pre-process face to face. This has now turned into global career fairs with top Blue Chips seeking talent from all areas.

Recruitment shifted dramatically in the 1960s in the 1970s from simply  a job market where jobs where available and full employment was the reality to the massive depression of the early Seventies. The Eighties saw an upswing in the economy and crucially Business became the game to be in: employees were educating themselves, the brightest and best were no longer looking for jobs for life; they wanted statues, reward, and responsibility over security. With the onset of IT after 1994 we see a further crucial change: unlike Ford and his manufacturing base where manpower is needed, in the Knowledge Economy, specialism is in the hands of the few and they are the talent. You either know SAP or you don’t, you can either write COBOL or you can’t, no longer is it just take a kid, train them in sales, if they do well promote them; the game changed.

What did not change was that organizations acknowledged that a good organization needed both a good culture and that that came, not from theories and GANT charts, but from its leaders and its people. Now it seems just common sense, but as IBM proved, the balance is between being an organization that demands people act in an exact way (The Blue Book for employees even outlined dinner conversations for middle managers) and Microsoft, who integrated new techniques, sought talent, and did it right during the 90s.

In conclusion, having some understanding that quality and feedback process should shape a talent process, and that it should not just be a recruitment process matters. As we shall see in the next part, talent is about identification, but, without the right culture talent leaves; and we don’t want that investment bolting, do we?

Introduction

Talent management is narrowly defined as recruiting, aligning, retaining and enabling the best within an organisation. Talent is, simply, all about organisations having individuals who make a significantly profitable long-term contribution.

This course will give you an understanding and overview of the thinking behind and application of talent management programs.

This course is split into six parts:

1. Part One: the history and purpose of talent management
2. Part Two: the talent process in organisational strategy
3. Part Three: setting up a talent program
4. Part Four: finding talent
5. Part Five: the key skill: retaining and engaging talent
6. Part Six: assessment, metrics, and proving the ROI
7. Part Seven: what might the future of talent management hold?
8. Part Eight: summary and conclusion and a talent checklist

1. Part One: The history and purpose of talent management: What is it? Does it matter? Has it now been shown to be an effective identifier for HR?

2. Part Two: The talent process in organisational strategy: talent management’s success is only partly determined by talent, as significantly there must be strategic alignment and buy-in at the most senior level. This part of the course looks at the overall strategic goals and the big picture aims of talent management.

3. Part Three: Setting up a talent program: What are the goals? What are the costs? What are the risks vs. rewards? What is the expected ROI? We will look at both standard and non-standard models within talent management from alignment, building a talent pipeline, and gap identification; through to tools such a self-election & two-step promotion, onto succession planning and offboarding and more; and asks what works and why.

4. Part Four: Finding Talent. So you’re ready: how do you define the talent you want? Where and how are you going to find that find talent? How can the recruitment process help talent? What is talent looking for?

5. Part Five: The Key Skill: aligning, retaining, and engaging talent. The core of any talent process is retention and engagement: having found your star and invested in early promotion and it’s all looking good; now others start sniffing round - how do you keep the talent without losing perspective? What incentives and motivators can the organisation offer that won’t break the budget but will keep talent? What career paths and models are in place for talent and what do you expect from talent? In a fully mobile world should talent be retained? Can talent management and succession planning ever become two halves of the same process?

6. Part Six: Assessment, metrics, and proving the ROI. Good performance management, clear internal processes, and excellence in the interface between the IT data and its applied use is essential for talent management - here we look at the systems and OD interface and ask how the mix of both human and IT resources can significantly improve the talent process.

7. Part Seven: What might the future of talent management hold? As more and more organisations recognize the value of a good talent and performance process we ask what the future holds and what other models may add value to current talent models.

8. Part Eight: Summary and Conclusion; and a Talent Checklist.

We hope you enjoy this course and that it helps your thinking around talent - we wish you a great learning 2010!

Yellow Flower - Aoru - FlickR CC

As we move out of the worst of the recession, and the US showed a 5.6% growth for the latest quarterly released figures from the Treasury, we should be able to ask what can we do to accentuate the positive.

A good intelegant approach is to push the vision up the agenda - give people a “totem pole” to gather round and the tribe will be more cohesive. The most important part is that values and strategy work together well.

There has been lots of recent thought around this area. Authors such as Richard Barrett, who created the Values Center, with it’s emphasis on vision and values, I have been a fan of a longtime, have been working on this theme for a long time and it is one that more organizations need to take seriously.

In the current era of cost-cutting and expediency it is tempting to push values and vision to the backburner and simply focus on bottom line top line issues - however while it is easy to see the folly of this it is more difficult to drive it forward in the real day to day cut and thrust of commerce.

The best companies take values seriously, our core values and ethics make us feel more surety, as well as more professional and more creative: and those are not bad attributes to want in employees in tough times…

On sure way to do so is to run some Appreciative Inquiry workshops. They are a very resilient way to approach long-term motivation by linking real, proven past successes and those stories, the tribal myths, if you will, with the future positive hopes of the teams. This not only brings continuity, it also reinforces messages of success, and creates a success culture. A side note here would be that AI is also good for encouraging openess, transparency, and clarity when success eludes us, as it emphasizes a culture where failure is discussed without attribution.

Values are not trivial or expendable. They should be the core of our thinking. And with clear values comes the elimination of the negative.

Aristotelian virtues remain one of the clearest exposition of good behaviour:

Put intelegantly: simple, serious, and sincere are better than any other traits.

Group photograph of some of the men hired to work on the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway High Level Bridge. Men are sitting or standing on the scaffolding for the first span of the bridge.

(1908 - Galt Museum - FlickR Commons)

Intelligence testing tests the ability to crack “codes” and personality testing looks for “archetypes”.

We have been aware for a while that they are a so-so predictor of the effort a person will put in to prove their ability. After all, what they seem to ignore is the role of values and character in the general overall makeup of the individual.

A motivated character is an essential sine qua non of the successful organization and good talent management, where motivation is  correctly seen as effort + self-will generating a desire to reach a goal.

The goal is important and the effort is essential.

Effort is more important than smarts alone: Dr Carol Dweck of Stanford has proved that telling children they are smart was nowhere near as motivating as praising them for their effort.

Or put intelegantly: telling a person you admire their effort and ability to get the job done, rather than simply saying “you’re great” will be a greater motivator - and we all get that!

However, motivation theories are all too frequently tied to intelligence and personality testing. Especially when they are applied to organizations and work. In employee testing this is often used to see if it is possible to spot the best candidate, or even the high-flier.

A motivated and intelligent person with a given Myers-Briggs or Big 5 personality describes both a demonic psychopath as well as a morally centered and excellent worker. Both on paper would look precisely the same.

I would argue the case that one of the missing components is character.

There is currently the 16PF (Sixteen personality factor questionnaire). This is based on the enormous lexigraphic work of finding 17,953 trait names and by factor analysis reducing those to  4,505, of Allport and Odbert, and then formed into the 16PF questionnaire by Raymond B. Catell in 1956.

Catell’s work still holds good, but it is dated. Think how the world has changed - even if the traits that make a person resilient, friendly, likable, and successful haven’t. Note these have nothing to do with talk or charm or other deceptions. We are talking result-based interviewing for experienced workers and checkable certification and highly checkable letters of recommendation for both them and college leavers. (I always ring and talk to the professor and the college warden - with signed permission for the candidate, of course.)

There is a great story told in Sweden about an engineer who was impossible to work with. So they only way they could get rid of them was to leave superb job offers where the person would see them and then give them glowing, superlative, references. SOEP. Someone else’s problem! (So how would YOU check uncover that one?!)

So, what is character? One definition, albeit a deliberately loose one, might be  as follows: personality is inherited, character is what we show when times get tough.

This development is both intrinsic and extrinsic. It is both our internal interpretation (a cognitive process) and the environmental effect (behavioral). These are categorically not mutually exclusive, but rather blend and meld to temper and forge the personality.

However, how can we test for character?

What is character?

Is it a list of adjectives, synonyms?
Are they qualities that are universally recognizable?

If they are instinctively understood and recognized how can we test to see if a person possesses genuine character?  Will they keep going when the going gets tough?

There is a caution here: this should not mean foolhardiness.

The number one indicator is an emotional intelligence test coupled with solid testable work sills and results.

In a previous post I suggested ways to stop office politics; the same applies here: the Golden Rule is look at results not at talk.

All modern human life is predicated on two notions. We are only called to make these two decisions in our lives: who will you live or not live with, and what you do or don’t work with…..

John Montgomery Rouse, The Way of Intelegance

I will posting a lot over the coming months on ergosophy.

The word itself: ergo = work sophos = wisdom.

Definition: n. a branch of philosophy concerning life as work.

Frederick Soddy has used the word but not in this definition. (I believe I am the first to do so.)

There are big questions: What is work? Why do we work?

The only field that has been applied is ethics and evidence shows that this has lacked a modicum of essential rigour.

Ergosophy is a not a branch of sociology, economics or ethnology. Ergosophy is pure and applied philosophy in relation to work.

This is not a trivial pursuit: as human beings we work more any other activity. That includes reproduction, raising offspring, sleeping, eating, play etc; we are considered eligible for work, on average, for 45 years. When we are 45 years old we are only just over half-way through work, with another 20 years ahead of us…

Taking Hegelian, Kantian, Aristotelian, Platonic, even Cartesian models and applying them to the notion and meaning of work is a good beginning, but we live in post-modern times so can we even talk about work as the means of production, as our raison d’être? Or is there a lot more to this?

What are the qualia of work? The ontological definitions of work? How are Ayn Rand’s objectivism, or Karl Popper’s critical rationalism a part of the puzzle. Do aristotlean categories and the platonic ideal, or liebnizian monads or spinozian euadaimonia even augustian theology help us see work afresh?

It is hardly a new idea to suggest that work defines us, but it may be new to ask how can we grabble, overpower, and define work as a philosophical puzzle rather by defining work as systems.

Particularly as both politics and economics are failing us in getting us all to enjoy work when compared to how we may enjoy our free time.

Sure, some of us love work and here the notion of satisfaction may be coupled to reward rather than to the act per se; but maybe a philosophical approach will move on from the stagnant pool we are in now.

If you interested in contributing to the upcoming ISSN registered journal then please contact me for guidelines for submission etc;

[Source: Frankfurt Airport, Photographer: Sugu, FlickR cc]

When times are good as they were for the ten years before November 2008 switching jobs or even careers was possible and even fun. Now, as we go through more bad news for the markets and the constant distancing of the light at the end of the tunnel changing careers is becoming the first sign of foolhardiness.

So what to do?

Well, Rouse Circles, suggests first and foremost improve your core work skills. What courses are you signed up for this Autumn? Can you read more, do more, focus more, get a qualification; anything, that will improve your core job skills? Secondly, how you get fitter both mentally, physically, and emotionally? The old adage about when the going gets tough, the tough get going is a pretty good one here. Are you fearful of the future , or are you saying no fear, and just getting on with the job.

From the people I talk to the number one recommendation is the most intelegant: get the job done!

Less fluff, more action. As we all get back into the rhythm of work after summer breaks I think their advice is good: make the extra calls, go the extra mile, and wear an extra smile…

I am keeping my eyes open for more on this subject and will post more.

Enough already! Since November 16th we have been hearing nothing but doom and gloom. While this is right on the button in one respect it is forgetting something fundamental: now we have a chance to really ask what is our mettle, what values do we truly value, and how can we grow. Perhaps this is a chance to truly develop a vision - one where each worker has a stronger sense of self than their job title. A little more work on integrity, honesty, and core decency would be a paid profit from hard times, right?

[Source: FlickR CC Photographer: TheAlieness GiselaGiardino]

ScienceDaily (Jan. 9, 2009) — The International Research Institute of Stavanger (IRIS), which is based in Norway, have studied which leadership qualities could help employees return from sick leave early. Being considerate, understanding and able to maintain contact with the sick-listed are the most important leadership qualities, according to the study.

“The manager has a key role when it comes to sick leave. He or she is often the best available measure for promoting health in these cases. A manager with good qualities can have a great impact on how long the employee is off sick”, says senior researcher Randi Wågø Aas, at IRIS, which is owned by the University of Stavanger and Rogalandsforskning.

Norway has the highest sick leave figures in Europe, and the authorities are constantly looking for new measures to get numbers down. The latest research effort from IRIS on the topic studied the relationship between the employees who are signed off sick, and their managers. Part of this work has now been published in the Journal of Occupational Rehabilitation.

Previous research has revealed a strong link between management and sick leave.

The risk of long term sick leave rises proportionally to the lack of support from the manager.

“That is why we think it is interesting to look at which qualities in managers are considered important”, says Ms Wågø Aas. Researchers followed 30 people on long term sick leave over the course of eight months. Both the employees and their managers were asked which management qualities they felt were the most important in the follow-up work. Researchers got 345 descriptions of important qualities, which were naturally grouped in 78 specific management qualities. The three most often mentioned were Ability to make contact, Consideration and Understanding.

In other words, the study shows that people on sick leave first and foremost need to feel cared for.

“The employees find it important that their managers are understanding, supportive, attentive, empathetic, warm and friendly. When they are on sick leave, people are in a position of vulnerability. Many of them talk about feeling suspected, and say their problems are not taken seriously”, says Ms Aas.

The 78 manager qualities which emerged from the investigation were divided into seven categories, which each represent a given type of manager. The one mentioned the most frequently, is nicknamed The Protector, who has caring qualities. Number two is The Problem Solver, who is the best at adapting. The third most important is The Contact Maker, and then it is The Trust Creator, The Recognizer, The Encourager, and The Responsibility-maker. Each of these types contains groups of qualities which emerge in the interviews. Ideally, managers with staff responsibilities should have a bit of each of the seven in them, but what is the most important will vary.

“The perfect manager can take steps which are tailored to the individual’s needs. The survey shows that there are great differences in what the individual considers good follow-up. It is also clear that a combination of different management qualities is needed. A great many people need both a pat on the shoulder, and to be welcomed back to work”, says Ms Aas. According to her, it also seems that contact ability is a necessary quality in order to achieve the combination of protection and problem-solving.

Researchers also found age differences in the individual’s needs while on sick leave. Younger employees had the greatest need for protection and recognition, while those over 45 were more concerned with problem solving and being held responsible.

“Older people are probably more concerned with adaptation of their work environment, to make sure they can get back to work. Younger employees are possibly more vulnerable, and need more encouragement”, she says.

A third important find in the study, is the difference in what the employees and the managers thought was important. The employees emphasised recognition and encouragement more than the managers, who were more concerned with accountability, and problem solving.

“If employees have different needs from what the managers are aware of, and this is not communicated, there is a big problem. It is easy to view management as mainly about adapting all practical and formal matters for the employee. For most employees however, it is more important to be understood and included. For instance, many managers think they are protecting the employee by telling them that they do not need to work. In reality, they are simply extending the sick leave, since the employee does not feel included. After all, many are able to do things even though they are ill”, says Senior researcher Ms Wågø Aas.

IRIS will continue to study the interview material. They also wish to develop a feedback tool, which aims to improve communication between managers and employees on sick leave.

Here are the types of managers identified in the study:

1. The Protector

Protects the employee, understands the situation, helps and includes. Shows compassion, is discreet, warm and friendly.

2. The Problem Solver

Professional, solution oriented and creative. Can, among other things, change the tasks or in other ways adapt them so that the employee can continue to work. Takes responsibility, and gives individual treatment.

3. The Contact Maker

Gets in touch with the employee to inform of what is happening in the workplace. Is also interested in how the employee is doing, and proves a listening and able conversationalist.

4. The Trust Creator

Is discreet, predictable, attentive, honest and open. Creates trust and a feeling of safety.

5. The Recognizer

Behaves acknowledging, confirming and without prejudice towards the employee.

Shows respect and confidence.

6. The Encourager

Has a positive attitude, and is generous and happy. Motivates, inspires and is available. This type of manager has a sense of humour, as well as being just, patient, and encouraging.

7. The Responsibility-maker

Assertive, fearless, challenging, and direct. Is honest, to the point and not afraid to establish boundaries or confront. Gives the employee challenges and responsibility for his or her own situation.

Adapted from materials provided by The University of Stavanger.

Supporting what many of us who are not musically talented have often felt, new research reveals that trained musicians really do think differently than the rest of us.

Vanderbilt University psychologists have found that professionally trained musicians  use a creative technique called divergent thinking more effectively, and also use both the left and the right sides of their frontal cortex more than the average person.

The research by Crystal Gibson, Bradley Folley and Sohee Park is currently in press at the journal Brain and Cognition.

“We were interested in how individuals who are naturally creative look at problems that are best solved by thinking ‘out of the box’,” Folley said. “We studied musicians because creative thinking is part of their daily experience, and we found that there were qualitative differences in the types of answers they gave to problems and in their associated brain activity.”

One possible explanation is that many musicians must be able to use both hands independently to play their instruments.

“Musicians may be particularly good at efficiently accessing and integrating competing information from both hemispheres,” Folley said. “Instrumental musicians often integrate different melodic lines with both hands into a single musical piece, and they have to be very good at simultaneously reading the musical symbols, which are like left-hemisphere-based language, and integrating the written music with their own interpretation, which has been linked to the right hemisphere.”

Previous studies of creativity have focused on divergent thinking, which is the ability to come up with new solutions to open-ended, multifaceted problems. Highly creative individuals often display more divergent thinking than their less creative counterparts.

To conduct the study, the researchers recruited 20 classical music students from the Vanderbilt Blair School of Music and 20 non-musicians from a Vanderbilt introductory psychology course. The musicians each had at least eight years of training. The instruments they played included the piano, woodwind, string and percussion instruments. The groups were matched based on age, gender, education, sex, high school grades and SAT scores.

The researchers conducted two experiments to compare the creative thinking processes of the musicians and the control subjects. In the first experiment, the researchers showed the research subjects a variety of household objects and asked them to make up new functions for them, and also gave them a written word association test. The musicians gave more correct responses than non-musicians on the word association test, which the researchers believe may be attributed to enhanced verbal ability among musicians. The musicians also suggested more novel uses for the household objects than their non-musical counterparts.

In the second experiment, the two groups again were asked to identify new uses for everyday objects as well as to perform a basic control task while the activity in their prefrontal lobes was monitored using a brain scanning technique called near-infrared spectroscopy, or NIRS. NIRS measures changes in blood oxygenation in the cortex while an individual is performing a cognitive task.

“When we measured subjects’ prefrontal cortical activity while completing the alternate uses task, we found that trained musicians had greater activity in both sides of their frontal lobes. Because we equated musicians and non-musicians in terms of their performance, this finding was not simply due to the musicians inventing more uses; there seems to be a qualitative difference in how they think about this information,” Folley said.

The researchers also found that, overall, the musicians had higher IQ scores than the non-musicians, supporting recent studies that intensive musical training is associated with an elevated IQ score.

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Article adapted by Medical News Today from original press release.
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The research was partially supported by a Vanderbilt University Discovery Grant.

Folley is a postdoctoral fellow. Park is a professor of psychology and psychiatry and a member of the Center for Integrative and Cognitive Neuroscience. Gibson was an undergraduate student and research assistant in the psychology department at Vanderbilt when this work was conducted and is now a Peace Corps volunteer based in Namibia. Park and Folley are Vanderbilt Kennedy Center for Research on Human Development investigators.

Source: Melanie Moran
Vanderbilt University