What Talents Create The Heart of Your Business?

If You Are In Business For the Long run. . .

. . .then you need the kind of people who will:

1. Take you there

2. Keep you there

Do you know who those "kinds" of people are?

I'm in the midst of working with a company who wants to genuinely hire and develop talent for the future. So I put together an activity (doesn't take long with the right cross-section of people) to pinpoint the talents needed by everyone in order to take this company where it wants to go.

Below is a graphic that shows the results of the session. These are now being used as an over-arching set of characteristics by which to hire and identify current talent.

I'll explain a little more following the graphic.

One important note: When we talk about "ability" in the examples, we are talking about an observable, consistent tendency to demonstrate the related behavior in a variety of situations. We are focused on people who will demonstrate these talents regardless of role, job description or business unit.

Have a look:

The Benefits

1. A key group of people has to dig deep--mentally and emotionally--to agree on these fundamental talents.

2. We are talking about a systemic issue here. Instead of talking philosophically about building a culture, a critical mass of people with these talents will create and sustain it.

3.These are tied directly to the long-term strategy.

4. We can assess/identify who exhibits or possesses these, even if they haven't yet had the opportunity to display them in hugely noticeable ways. That is, the organization is committed to uncovering what may not have been obvious in the way it operated in the past. They are not willing to toss people by the wayside without a real good look at what they are all about.

What Will Be Tough

1. Have you thought about the biases that people build toward others after a period of time working together? (The expression "Familiarity breeds contempt" comes to mind). So we're setting up a methodology that won't allow any one ticked-off manager or colleague to have enough singular power to zap someone because of some historical, one-time incident.

2. It's not clear that some of the HR staff have many of these characteristics. As a result, there is concern that they wouldn't be able to genuinely recognize them in others. Not a good thing for hiring or development.

3. We don't know what we don't know. And we admit it.

This is a fairly bold step. I don't know all the answers, nor does my client. We're willing to go with what we believe is a well thought-out methodology and learn some things along the way.

One more really important note:

Have a look at Business Orientation. This is one of my favorite and most satisfying realizations of the past 30 years.

Companies naturally hire top-notch researchers, technology pros, and other specialists for their expertise. Then the company is disappointed when these folks don't pay attention to the P&L statement and other related business factors.

So, my urging is this: Start looking for people who  begin their day with a business mentality and use their specialty to contribute to results. That is, find  people who have the self-image of a business person who does great research, or who "practices" I.T. It's a different way to look at this whole talent thing-- give it a try. You will discover that by changing your thinking you'll change how you begin to filter candidates and "promotables" more accurately.

Would this work well for you and your organization?

Comments

[Jo]

I thought I left a comment??

I had a question: do we all have to be the same??

[Steve Roesler]

Hi, Jo,

Hmmm...don't know what happened to the other comment, but this question is a good one.

The answer is, in order to be part of the organization above, people need to have those attributes to a significant degree.

But that doesn't make them "the same." Their specific areas of expertise, how they approach their work, individual creativity. . .all of those make each person quite unique.