any changes in business strategy are factored into the talent model adopted by the organisation as quickly as possible;
the talent management strategy is agile and capable of responding to any change in the competitive landscape.
The direct involvement of the chief executive is crucial to emphasise the importance of the function and make sure that it is properly aligned with the business strategy. Also critical is the involvement of operational heads across the company to make sure that people with the right skills and experience are recruited to the top management team.
3 Managing the talent process
In the past decade there has been growing use of a process-led approach to talent planning which has focused on a small cohort of high-flyers who are destined to become future top leaders. Such an approach works well when the business environment is relatively stable and companies are reasonably confident about their strategies and the capabilities to execute their plans successfully.
A process-based “machine” helps ensure consistency and a useful end-to-end view of how and where talent needs to enter and move across the organisation. The drawback is that it becomes unwieldy. It becomes so resource intensive that its focus and energies are directed at what it does rather than what it is meant to achieve in terms of supporting the business strategy.
Companies in uncertain or highly competitive conditions are rethinking their approach to talent management. They are not necessarily dismantling their systems but are looking at the question of how to build more flexibility.
In this respect:
Companies should avoid building an overly complex “talent machine” and must constantly ask themselves whether what they are doing in terms of talent management is achieving the desired results.
In complex and fast-changing conditions, the talent strategy needs to be more flexible so that the right capabilities are ready for deployment when and where they are needed.
A broader definition of talent will allow companies to draw on diverse sources of talent, notably women, who might otherwise be overlooked by traditional processes. Companies have to define the leadership and technical abilities that most suit their business contexts. It is also important to make sure that their talented staff can work equally effectively in different business models and can cope with uncertainty and pressure.
Some companies are placing greater importance on finding the right people rather than the right skills. Skills can be learnt, but traits such as commitment or energy cannot.
Talent needs to be increasingly mobile, but companies need greater skills in strategic workforce planning to ensure they plug their skills gaps and develop their talented staff. This also requires companies to make sure that their talent is visible to the whole organisation.
Career planning should keep in mind the long view and be more personal and customised, taking into account individual characteristics and circumstances; for example, when considering international assignments.
4 The individual and the organisation
Increasing numbers of employees, not just women and young employees, are taking an individualistic approach to their careers and may not be willing to sacrifice everything to get to the top. Talented individuals appear much less loyal to their organisations. They are strongly committed to developing their own talent and pursuing their own goals before those of the organisation.
Organisations need to take on board this new reality and offer the right development opportunities and work experiences – otherwise talented people will leave.
Flexible career planning can help satisfy talented people, but it may not be sufficient to gain their trust and loyalty. Despite the best processes, some talented individuals continue to enter companies, learn what they can and then move on – throwing succession plans into disarray.
In this respect:
People from generation Y (broadly, those born between 1980 and 2000) pose challenges for talent management. It is a generation with high expectations and a low tolerance level, voting with its feet if employers fail to deliver.
Graduates’ expectations of a rapid rise to management may be unrealistic but still pose difficulties for organisations that do not want to lose genuinely talented people; high-flying women and older high-performing individuals share many of the frustrations of ambitious talented graduates.
Four dimensions of work are crucial for motivating and retaining talented individuals: rapid job advancement; money and challenging work; work–life balance; and freedom and autonomy.
In concert with the five dimensions there must be a compelling “employee value proposition”, which entails offering each talented individual the right set of career inducements.
Career planning must be highly tailored and personal for the segment of talented employees whose contribution is crucial to the longer-term strategy.
Flexible career planning has six dimensions: open and honest career discussions; personalised career opportunities; frequent career reviews; career trellises (which allow people to further their careers while making sideways moves and pursuing specialist avenues); flexible working arrangements; tailored learning and development and the use of coaches, mentors and sponsors.
5 Taking a culture-led approach
If companies want to recruit and retain the best-performing employees, they need to espouse values and goals that will encourage an emotional commitment to and personal identification with the organisation.
Senior leaders play a crucial role in “bonding” talent to the organisation by making time to get to know these individuals and showing how much the company values their contribution. A culture that engages employees and helps give meaning to their work will help keep them loyal to the company even when the going gets tough.
However, companies that become obsessed with achieving a tight cultural “fit” between the organisation and the individual can become unduly risk adverse in their recruitment and selection decisions, with the result that they forgo the chance to take on those such as creative or entrepreneurially minded individuals who are different but have a lot to offer.
In this respect:
There must be a compelling rationale for why anyone should work for an organisation.
The values and cultural mores of an organisation must be “lived” and followed by the chief executive and the senior management team and applied consistently.
These values must be reflected in the way top talent is developed, providing “disruptive” learning opportunities through secondments and assignments that promote and reflect the organisation’s commitment to the communities in which it operates.
Ideally, an organisation should be transparent about employees’ prospects, boosting their confidence and commitment and taking each individual’s desires and circumstances into account in developing their capabilities and career planning.
6 Creating a talent eco-structure
Developing a talent “ecosystem” helps overcome the problems of in-house dependence in a world where talented people are less likely to commit to long-term employment in an organisation. What used to be termed “the periphery” consisting of those who choose to work part time or be self-employed is growing.
There is also a growing proportion of young people who are opting out of corporate employment altogether, and who have entrepreneurial skills and aspirations that large organisations have been poor at accommodating but which they need if they are to anticipate and respond effectively to unexpected change and volatility.
The use of business incubation schemes and linked-in internships, career planning specifically targeted at intrapreneurs, and relationships with former employees based on the concept of alumni and associate status enables organisations to extend their talent ecosystem. They can reach and retain talent they would otherwise lose.
However, for a talent ecosystem to work, organisations need to reach beyond their traditional boundaries.
In this respect:
Business incubation schemes, inte
rnships and alumni or associate relationships need to be integrated into the existing talent management strategy, opening up a two-way avenue of opportunities for corporate employees and those employed in more oblique ways.
Career planning should be adapted accordingly, allowing talented workers who do not want traditional corporate careers the chance to pursue entrepreneurial activities while remaining in the organisation’s orbit, and alumni and associates the opportunity to return to the corporate fold if their circumstances or aspirations change.
The “ecosystem” of talent and the organisation should share the same core values, and cultural bonds should be strengthened through invitations to the organisation’s events and social functions.
Those within the ecosystem should also be given or be able to take advantage of the development opportunities available to talented in-house employees.
7 Playing the talent game
For individuals who want to make the most of the opportunities their talent affords them, the three principal options are corporate management, consultancy, and setting up and running their own business. For many people who have specialist skills there is another option, operating as an independent self-employed “freelancer”, a category that labour-market research suggests is growing by over 10% a year.
There are also highly specialist individuals who want to stay specialist and not progress to leadership roles. Some companies are responding to their needs by creating separate talent pools so that those wishing to progress within their own specialism are developed and rewarded on a par with those who aspire to climb the corporate ladder.
In general, what matters for anyone who wants to get on is being confident, being opportunistic and building a support network that allows personal as well as career aspirations, which may be linked, to be achieved.
It is also important that there is an open discussion between individuals and their employers about these aspirations. This applies to freelancers as well as to those on the payroll.
Interviews carried out for this book revealed several characteristics of successful people:
They have the ability to make the company grade by achieving performance targets and demonstrating senior management potential through, for example, managing teams and projects, collaborating across disciplines, and leading with vision and inspiration.
They are opportunistic and take risks. They do not follow a rigid career path but take advantage of openings and unexpected job offers, while retaining a longer-term vision of where they want to end up.
They develop their own network of support, building a cadre of experienced and insightful personal contacts who can advise on career moves and difficult career issues.
They expect to be mobile and are open with the organisation when their personal and family circumstances enable them to be so – and when they do not.
If they are recruited to senior operational positions, they should have a thorough grounding in general management theory and practice and exposure to new ideas and research. This can be acquired either through self-sponsored study for an MBA or a related masters’ qualification or through a company-sponsored management programme. Self-sponsored MBAs allow individuals to reflect on career options and provide openings to, for example, a career in management consultancy or starting up their own business.
They have self-confidence and self-drive, fostered by regular feedback and mentoring support.
If they are aiming for a senior management position, they identify closely with the values and remit of the organisation and understand its underlying culture and what makes it tick. They also have the ability to engage with senior executives.
8 Planning for the future
There are eight guiding principles for managing talent in a more volatile and uncertain world, where talent is in demand and talented people have more power and discretion over how they contribute their talent to an organisation:
A deep and genuine commitment to deploy talent for maximum business impact.
A talent plan goes hand-in-hand with the design and execution of the business strategy.
Talented individuals are partners, not pawns, in any process to harness their abilities.
A culture that fosters talent is the bedrock of a successful talent strategy.
A successful talent strategy stands or falls on the direct involvement of the chief executive.
Talent managers have close links with business heads and the senior executive team and work at a strategic level to achieve the business plan.
Talent pools of many should feel like a pool of one.
The talent strategy helps build an ecosystem that extends beyond the borders of the organisation.
These are explained in more detail in the last section of Chapter 8.
Acknowledgements
In producing this book, we have been helped by a number of individuals and organisations that require acknowledgement.
First, we would like to thank the Economist Conference Unit for allowing us to access and quote extracts from the presentations made at the Economist Talent Management Summits in June 2011 and 2012. This proved a mine of insights, observations and good practice.
We would like to acknowledge the support and encouragement of “thought leaders” on this topic, most notable Emily Lawson of McKinsey, David Smith of Accenture, Jean-Michel Caye and Roselinde Torres of Boston Consulting Group, Eric Olsen of Heidrick & Struggles, Paul Levett of SHL, Patricia Leighton, and Angela Baron, formerly of the UK Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, all of whom contributed their thoughts and insights to this book.
We would also like to thank the many senior executives responsible for talent management who allowed us to interview them for the book. These include Becky Snow, global talent director at Mars Incorporated; Joydeep Bose, president and global head of human resources at Olam International, and his colleagues Janaky Grant, head of learning and development and HR business partner, and Steve Driver, head of manufacturing and technical services; Marielle de Macker, managing director of group HR at Randstad; Cornel Fourie, former chief human resources officer at Gulf International Bank; and Caroline Curtis, head of talent, performance and leadership development at Santander UK.
Then there are the “high-fliers” themselves, people with a track record of success that allowed us to capture their thoughts about being talented and being talent-managed. These include Tim Levine, who gave up a traditional corporate career to pursue a life as an entrepreneur in his 20s and is now a managing partner and founder of Augmentum Capital; Stephen Dury, director of strategy and market development at Santander UK; Ross Hall, formerly a senior manager at both GlaxoSmithKline and Pearson and now an independent entrepreneur; Simon Devonshire, London manager of the Wayra Academy, founded by Telefónica; Rajeeb Dey, entrepreneur and founder of Enternships; Rain Newton Smith, head of emerging markets at Oxford Economics; Ian Pearman, CEO of Abbott Mead Vickers; and MBA alumni Salini Joseph, Sanjar Ibragimov and Carlos Velasco. Finally, acknowledgements to Julia Irrgang and Sandra Schwarzer of INSEAD, Claire Lecoq of IMD and Fiona Sandford of London Business School for all their help.
On the editorial side, thanks to Stephen Brough and Penny Williams. Lastly, we would like to thank our partners Stephen and Suzy, for putting up with long weekends of us being chained to the computer and immersed in mutual deliberation.
Research acknowledgements
This book would not have been possible without the help of the following companies that helped with the research and the people who gave up their time to be interviewed.
Abbott Mead Vickers, advertising agency
Ian Pearman, chief executive
Accenture, management consultancy
David Smith, senior managing director
Ashridge Business School, UK-based international business school
Carina Paine Schofield, research fellow Sue Honore, independent learning consultant and project manager
AT&T, multinational telecommunications corporatio
n
Carrie Corbin, associate director of talent acquisition
Augmentum Capital, UK private equity firm
Tim Levine, founder and partner
Boeing, global aerospace company
Boston Consulting Group, global management consulting firm
Jean-Michel Caye, BCG Fellow and head of the HR/people advantages and talent topics for BCG globally Roselinde Torres, senior partner and managing director
BraveNewTalent.com, online social recruitment network
Lucian Tarnowski, founder and chief executive
Enternships.com, online company that finds places in SMEs for university graduates with entrepreneurial ambitions
Rajeeb Dey, founder and chief executive
Frontier Communications, American telephone company
Maggie Wilderotter, chairman and chief executive
Getty Images, company that creates and distributes images, footage and music online
Lisa Calvert, senior vice-president, human resources and facilities
Google, multinational corporation specialising in internet-related services and products
Liane Hornsey, vice-president of people operations
Gulf International Bank, based in Bahrain
Cornel Fourie, former chief human resources officer
Hays, UK recruitment company
James Cullens, group human resources director
Heidrich & Struggles, international executive search firm
Eric Olson, global managing partner of leadership consulting
IBM, multinational technology and consulting corporation
Robin Willner, former vice-president, global community initiatives
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