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.

[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.

Source FlickR: Peter McDonald

How we use Emotional Intelligence and Emotional Quotient in teams and organizations matters.

While we will be dealing with metrics, alignment, and implementation, initially we need to consider the fundamental purpose of emotions and how they work when at work.

Let’s see how EI can improve sales teams for a starter. And an environmental approach to keep talent.

Rather than look at Goleman’s or Bar-On’s overwhelming contributions to EI initially, I would like to start on another more empirical track, and hopefully we’ll converge along the way and see how these threads tie together.

As stated in the introductory post, Emotional Quotient (EQ) and Emotional Intelligence (EI) has little to do with “being emotional”. Again, emotional intelligence is not how emotional a person is. It is a set of skills that enable me to be emotionally stable and mature: clever, if you will, at handling emotions.

It took several of the most brilliant medical minds of the pre-War period to understand the simple formula:

See Bear -> Feel Fear -> Run or Freeze

Through a set of extremely precise experiments psychologists, all previously medical doctors, sought the answer as to how and why we react the way we do. Especially to fear.

It led to some fundamental discoveries in the neurobiology as to how the brain and body create, react, and learn of and from emotional responses.

Bear -> Fear -> Run is otherwise known, in Walter B Cannon’s own words, as the flight or fight response. Cannon with Philip Bard proposed what has become the best known theory of emotional response. Some 50 years earlier, William James, the father of modern rigorous psychology in America and Carl Lange in Denmark both separately proposed what has come down to us as the James-Lange theory.

In the James-Lange theory the suggestions is: see bear, your body reacts before your cognitive mind does, your mind recognizes these reactions of the nervous system, and calls it fear (Or love, or whatever emotion you feel). Cannon-Bard on the other hand states that the emotions come first, i.e. your brain reacts and then your body does it’s flight or fight stuff.

Chicken or egg? A little.

And we still don’t really know the answer. What is accepted is that see bear have a physical reaction is normative. It would seem more holistic to suggest that the two are working in unison, that the amygdala (the reptile base of the human brain responsible for among other things the survival instinct) is programed to kick in both a cognitive response and a physical simultaneously as we need to survive.

What is certain is that I need my senses to recognize danger - however, just to muddy the waters, it appears, from recent experiments that the brain works faster than the physical nervous system. We seem to literally know fear before our body does - giving weight to the Cannon-Bard theory. What we can be absolutely certain of is that we do call that normative reaction an emotional reaction.

And, what has this got to do with Emotional Quotient and Emotional Intelligence?  As we will see EQ and EI are our not only about our emotional reactions, it is rather about our emotional awareness. It is from the combined efforts of Drs William James, Carl Lange, Walter B Cannon and Philip Bard that we developed a working understanding of emotion and the part of the brain that deals with and generates the neurochemical responses to environmental change: the limbic pathway.

The limbic pathway is the part of your brain that deals with emotions. Not just crying, fear, love, happiness, but rather the much more subtle and important stuff: our daily interaction and reactions with people and objects and out thoughts etc; these happen all the time, when we sleep, when we’re awake, and so on. The limbic pathway keeps on working out our emotional, cognitive state.

It is linked to both the hindbrain (the reptilian brain in humans controlling your most basic physical needs) and the higher brain functions (thought, memory, imagination) and releases dopamine (which makes you calm) and serotonin (which makes you happy).

What we are looking for at first is the correct mix of both of those neurotransmitters, if they are in balance we have emotional homeostasis.

This is a fancy way of saying we are able to be at our most optimal performance wise and keep our stronger emotions in check.

We exhibit one of the key indicators of Emotional Intelligence: self-control. We are calm. Even when driven to distraction, we are calm, self-controlled, and in check. All the time. We use our limbic pathway to keep calm, to assert ourselves without raising our voices, and we are still genuinely in relation to others - we are not artificially calm or stiff, or withdrawn, but neither are we shouting, stamping, and frothing at the mouth.

Such a person is not given to outbursts, or to total withdrawal. They have a mature developed sense of self. Their interaction with others is not based on subversive or agenda-based behaviors like narcissism, self-interest, psychotic manipulation, and so on. Emotional intelligent people are composed, detailed, focused and on point, they are calm, deliberate, but emotionally engaged. They do not sound or act like an automaton, but neither are they manic. Again, it is what we would all instinctively recognize as balanced behaviour.

In a 360° survey we might want to ask:
Does the person control themselves?
When stressed what is their reaction?
To fight? Or withdraw? Or to assert?

Assertive behaviour is more than don’t mess with me you’ll come off worse than me. Assertiveness is the ability to influence and engender respect in the other party. And here, high EI and EQ pay massive dividends. This is more than appearance and body language, it is a fundamental brain set, from the limbic pathway, that will not be rattled, that holds its position, that listens, and states clearly and precisely their position in a calm, measured, and considered way while still using emotions.

This is exceptionally useful for sales personnel who need to exude more than confidence. They need to exude professionalism, knowledge, and a keen self-awareness.

This has top line and bottom line effects.

In Strategic HR we might define this as a good indicator of maturity in young talent. They need to also show real engagement, drive, and results as well.

If the companies goal is to keep talent, and it should be a central HR goal of companies to retain the talented, the best, then helping them achieve early maturity in an excellent idea. This must be aligned with other factors such as motivation, rewards, respect, and inclusion otherwise it will be ineffective.

In the next post, we will look at other components of Emotional Intelligence and how scaling them up in an organization drives business results.