Filed under: HR Technology, Human Resources, Talent Strategy, organisational development, talent management
A great summary of some of Dave’s key thinking and the drivers to get HR delivering business value. Thanks again to Jim Holincheck for linking me / us to yet another thinker in this space !
The demand for HR people who can foot it at the top table around business issues and, more importantly adding business value is really increasing. Ulrich is certainly leading the charge on what is needed for HR to get on an even footing with Finance, Marketing etc. Interesting stuff…
Filed under: talent management
The topic of school reports has come up a number of times in my travels with sonar6 www.sonar6.com over recent weeks. Only this time it coincided with a survey from my son’s school on quality and, among other things, the value / understanding we got out of his school report.
For most, school is the first formal talent development facility that we enter in life – structured in some way with emphasis on making us competent but also identifying and nurturing our strengths. So why do we not take more of a talent management approach here?
I am not suggesting rigid performance management and segmentation as such but the information we get about our son’s performance is not relative and it does little to help us quickly understand how he is progressing and where he has done well etc.
I am interested in others opinions – does you education system / school take a talent management approach ? Where are the gaps ?
If you have children at school can you readily understand where they are at in the various subjects / competencies relative to their peers? Do you know quickly where they are excelling and where they need more help / coaching?
If a school report was available to you online would you view / use it as opposed to a paper based form? Or perhaps this is already being done outside of New Zealand?
Filed under: Talent Strategy, organisational development, talent management
Eric Jackson has a great blog that examines in more details some of the leadership challenges and issues that are faced by organisations all over the world.
One of his most popular pieces is featured on the Human Capital Institute site and is now entitled Top 10 Keys to building a firewall around your top talent
Its a very good summary I think of some key steps to enhancing the process of building a more robust talent pipeline and a stronger company through executing on a recognition and demonstration of investing in and and recognising the stars.
It’s also a good view of ALL the steps you need to take to make these initiatives stick and become an integral part of the culture.
Filed under: talent management
Apologies to those that did not receive the sonar6 newsletter this month – please drop me an email and I will ensure you get sent a copy.
Similarly if you are new this blog and would like to receive “Talentsheet” please let me know. We regularly review client success stories and the different ways organisations are using sonar6 to help them with talent management and identification. It also contains the latest features and enhancements for the solution and other interesting information we have found along the way!
Filed under: Human Resources, Leadership, Performance Management, Talent Strategy, organisational development, talent management
For years Jack Welch has stood at as a tough and charismatic leader who spent a huge proportion of his time nurturing and growing talent within General Electric.
He’s not at GE anymore but his pod-cast at Business-week is a fantastic way to get some deeper insight into his thinking on a wide range of management practice. One which he is most frequently associated with is the process of differential management.
Placing the entire company into bands (20% as “A” players – showered with recognition, rewards and development, 70% as “B” players – nurtured and developed to identify those with A potential and 10% as “C”players – to be managed up or our of the organisation).
All the episodes in his pod-cast series (co-hosted by his wife and former Harvard Business Review Executive Suzy) are well worth listening to but in respect to talent and performance management there are some standouts which I will highlight in this blog.
Have a listen to Jack’s responses around some reader questions related to applying 20 70 10 and differential management in general – interesting stuff!
http://www.businessweek.com/mediacenter/podcasts/welchway/welchway_09_25_06.htm
Filed under: HR, Human Resources, Leadership, Performance Management, organisational development, organizational development, talent management
Harvard Business Review has a free bi-weekly pod-cast which is very good.
It’s a great way to get a better guide on the vast amounts of information available with HBR and the associated publications.
One of the more recent articles was around management and the common traits of great managers. A good deal of time is spent discussing the concepts around differential management and the benefits of managing by nurturing strengths and mitigating weaknesses to ensure that talent is maximised within a team / organisation.
Only about twenty minutes listening but well worth the effort – the preceding piece on doing business in China is interesting but you can skip straight to the management piece.
The pod-cast entitled Episode 12 “How Great Managers Manage”and many others are available for free download at :http://harvardbusinessonline.hbsp.harvard.edu/b02/en/misc/ideacast/archives_hbrideacast.jhtml;jsessionid=AIMMKNZ5VYPIMAKRGWCB5VQBKE0YOISW#episode12Useful ?
I listen to a very cool pod-cast called Venture Voice – www.venturevoice.com . It’s a great listen for anyone who wants to hear the views of some very successful US entrepreneurs.
The most recent pod-cast is an interview with former Apple “evangelist” Guy Kawasaki – www.guykawasaki.com who was a senior executive at Apple for many years and now runs his own VC fund.
A couple things really interested me in this interview – the first was that Guy had one of the top jobs in Apple responsible for evangelising their software products and technology and yet he had little if any technical background or skills. His abilities it seems centred more around his attitude and ability to influence people of both technical and non technical orientations than a deep understanding of the technology itself.
Talent management relies on identifying and nurturing people’s strengths and complementing their weaknesses with other resources – they teamed guy up with a technical assistant who could foot it when the propellers really started spinning!
The second thing that I found interesting was his inate appreciation of the core elements of talent and their contribution to successful business. His blog has a very good review of a new book called “The No Asshole Rule” by Robert Sutton.
Looks like an interesting read…..
Filed under: HR, Human Resources, Leadership, Performance Management, organisational development, organizational development
I am half way through my regular tour of the Europe and the
US – talking with clients, selling and trying to understand the nuances of each country and geography as they relate to HR and Talent Management.
This trip has proven particularly interesting in terms of feedback and frustration from business executives and individuals the rising legal risk around collection and interpretation of personnel data. This is a time bomb rapidly counting down to some big lawsuits and ultimately a new contingency bucket for organisations in the ever increasing compliance category.
But it has to stop somewhere soon – the fact that information deemed “negative” or “unfounded” with respect to employee performance and or areas for improvement cannot be collected now in some country’s means that they are destined for a less productive and potentially de motivated workforce.
From the perspective of a talent management solution provider it also means that not only do you need to be able to customise the original implementation, but that there are potentially multiple geographical changes required to ensure on an ongoing basis that the system and storage of data complies.
There is no doubt that there is a wide spread of management capability in this area and that many go far beyond appropriate levels and tone of information collected but is the solution to prevent them capturing this information or to make them more effective at understanding what is appropriate when describing and communicating with employees around their performance and potential.
A tolerant, diverse organisation is critical to success and prosperity in the global economy but it seems the current approach in some countries will protect employees initially in some aspects but probably disadvantage those who wish to progress and increase their contribution.
Filed under: HR, Human Resources, Leadership, Talent Strategy, talent management
Lesson learnt — building a new business and having a baby can seriously affect your ability to maintain normal service — especially with things like blogs !
However between nappies and sleepless nights, we have still been able to acquire some new customers and move forward on some exciting new enhancements to sonar6.
I have been keeping a record of the things that have been interesting over the past few weeks but it is going to take a few days to get those thoughts down on screen.
My latest package from Amazon delivered some heavy food for thought in the form of the book “The Future of Human Resource Management” — a collection of thinking from HR leaders around the world and is edited by Mike Losey, Sue Meisinger and Dave Ulrich.
There are a number of great pieces in the book, but one in particular that resonates with me at the current time as the work from Bruce J. Avolio entitled “ The Chief Integrated Leader: Moving to the Next Economy’s HR Leader ”.
Bruce talks about these six waves of HR, which is a theory based on being able to identify some distinct trends in sections of the development of HR practice.
Essentially his thinking highlights the fact that the person responsible for what is currently known as HR (he suggests the title will change eventually as a result of the change in focus) will possess a far more generalist background and have a relatively deep understanding of all core business elements such as accounting and finance as well as strategy.
He sees their ability to “master integration” being the key measure of success in the future.
To me and makes a lot of sense, but give on the immense talent shortages and a lack of depth and interest in HR as a practice that is being seen in the academic world over recent times, where will we source these new masters of integration?
An interesting read if you get the opportunity.
Filed under: HR, Performance Management, Talent Strategy, talent management
Our research and client feedback has made it very clear that in engaging in the talent management process and talent mindset you are developing approximately 70% of the thinking and content for the traditional performance appraisal process.
Loathed by many employees and treated as merely a compliance exercise by significant numbers of people managers, the ROI both perceived and quanitifed around the value of the process is frightfully low.
But what if you could integrate the process and essentially link the elements to ensure employees were aware of their performance evaluations and clearly inderstood the linkage and development requirements in the context of both their fulfilment of core job requirements as well as expectations and achievement against clearly defined potential factors.
It will be possible to do this within Sonar6 (www.sonar6.com) by the end of this year
