• The talent management process begins…
• In the very enlightened organisations…
• The use of wikis, blogs and other web 2.0 tools…

Most organisations of any size that are looking for their future sustainability will have a plan for talent management.  These processes of identifying high-potentials (the so called hi-po’s which always conjures up the image of needles or excitable toddlers), succession planning and career development workshops are well known.  But increasingly I see organisations where despite the detailed planning for succession and the nurturing of the next generation of leaders, look outside their own organisation when senior roles become vacant.  Fresh ideas are needed? New blood? Something to shake things up a bit?  Perhaps, but doesn’t that indicate something of a problem with the talent management and development process and the investment which underpins it?

So what’s gone wrong?

The talent management process begins, inevitably with recruitment – bringing people into the organisation with the right mix of skills, drive and desire to carve out their own career while adding value through their endeavour and application.  I’ve written elsewhere about the need for graduate recruitment schemes to focus on the all important learning skills rather than get stuck in competences for the past. It is a fact which organisations often overlook that the graduates they recruit and invest in 2010 will be retiring in 2060!  One would hope with the level of investment of a graduate training scheme, organisations would be looking to keep that talent on board for as long as possible and maybe – in an uncertain world – their entire career.  Recruiting people who can be developed to do the jobs we have now rather than the jobs we will have in a radically different future is at best short sighted.

So once on board we need to think about how this latent talent will be nurtured and shaped to work within the organisation but also to transform the organisation to ensure it is fit for the future.

The focus of talent management needs to be about recognising those crucial change agents and adaptability skills.  Where the graduate training and talent management relies on a steady rise through the ranks, the outcome is never good enough.  The recruitment of mid-level managers who have cut their teeth in some other organisation should always be a worry for L&D teams.  If we have to go outside to gain some new ideas, the work we’re doing inside is simply not good enough in the rapidly changing environment of the corporate world.

One way of supporting a home grown route to talent is to recreate the career path which was so favoured a few years ago of working in different departments.  The idea, borrowed from the Japanese organisations which had embraced continuous improvement or ‘kaizen’, was that high potential individuals would follow a structured career path – not moving inexorably up the organisation but moving inexorably round the organisation.  Hi-po’s spending time in different functions and departments, learning the ropes, constantly being taken out of their comfort zone. This had the benefit of honing the individual’s learning skills, provided evidence of their adaptability and gave them a thorough grounding in all the different functions that one day they might be called upon to lead.

Add to this experiential development process a learning management system and an enterprise wide approach to learning and development, water well and fertilise with interesting and provocative inputs, and harvest the results.  If your enterprise wide approach to L&D involves interlinked departmental curricula and organisation wide leadership development so much the better.  Through a well designed LMS, the resulting well rounded individual can have their progress tracked and their learning accredited.  More importantly, this enterprise wide approach ensures duplication is avoided – why would you want to waste the time of these talented future leaders?

In the very enlightened organisations, this process of placements in different departments is accompanied by some time in special projects or activities outside the organisation.

I recently spent time with the HR Director of a leading supplier of building materials.  In this relatively unglamorous organisation, the leaders of tomorrow were involved in project work overseas with completely different companies in different industries – looking at the management and organisational challenges outside their own experience and their relatively traditional world.

As part of their Corporate Social Responsibility programme, these same managers also worked with community organisations in developing countries.  The communities in India and Africa where raw materials are quarried benefit from the management input of creative individuals to community schools and civic organisations.  The sponsoring company also benefit from different experiences and learning opportunities and have the chance to assess their talent in unusual and challenging situations and – by strengthening these communities – add security and sustainability to their own supply chain.

One of the things to look for from these development projects and programmes is how effectively the talented individuals bring their learning back to the organisation. It’s relatively easy to see whether the experience has led to new ideas, new effectiveness and a new appetite for their own development.  The results they achieve will either improve or not.  More difficult to assess – but far from impossible – is whether these individuals come back and can share their experience with others – the cascade effect.

Increasingly, this cascade of experience, the sharing of learning, will be important.  Important for the individual themselves in helping them embed their experience, analyse it and reinforce the desired behaviours. For the individual, it is a crucial learning process.  Constructivist learning theories identify this process of making a representation of what you have learned as an essential part of truly learning something.

In a networked world, it will be more and more common for this representation of these experiences – the lessons learned and the relevance of novel undertakings to the day job – will be performed digitally.  The use of wikis, blogs and other web 2.0 tools to share and amplify this learning will not only spread the benefit, but create an auditable output to support further assessment of those who demonstrate their ability to apply a breadth of experience to the challenges of the future.

Of course, the use of these tools is not yet embedded into, or taken seriously by, many organisations.  It is still an immature technology for all but a few.  Those who have yet to make use of the possibilities of web 2.0 technologies often cite the lack of time to be able to contribute or utilise the potential treasure trove of knowledge which an organisation’s intranet could provide.

I am a sports fan.  When watching television sport and listening to ex-players now converted into pundits, they describe peak sporting performers as ‘having so much time.’  Whether receiving the ball in midfield, returning serve or moving their feet to a demon fast bowler, these individuals seem to have more time to react than their less successful counterparts.  Is there a lesson here for talent managers?  Perhaps peak performers who have the learning skills we require for a different future and who add value not just by learning but by sharing their insight and knowledge also ‘seem to have more time’?

Why might that be?

First and perhaps most importantly, they do things quickly and correctly.  Right first time is actually one of the best ways of generating more time to do other things.  Also, these individuals prioritise the act of sharing knowledge and continually learning.  They make time for these activities.  In some respects, this is a selfish act.  As the old Russian proverb has it, to teach is to learn twice, so sharing your knowledge is never purely selfless.  But they also recognise that work is a team sport – the chain is only as strong as its weakest link, etc.  Developing others, having a hymn sheet that everyone can sing from and honing ideas in the cauldron of informed debate builds a better team and delivers better performance.

Add to this the concept of capturing this shared knowledge through web 2.0 tools – wikis, blogs, published online conversations.   The individual talent that is being nurtured is also developing those that will work with them as they grow into the leaders that the next generation will demand.

So as with all things, if you want something done, find a busy person to do it.  For talent managers everywhere, reviewing the input which these high fliers make into your corporate knowledge bank, the way they promote debate and thinking in an uncertain future and the way they embrace available technology to do so, will be useful indicators of potential.  Those leading our organisations into the second half of the 21^st Century will have mastered these ways of working and will be ready to adapt to building the skills and knowledge of their organisations to face whatever challenges may be thrown up over the course of their career.

They will also be digital natives and happily adapt their communication and knowledge sharing skills to whatever new technologies appear over the next fifty years. As a start point, organisations wanting to identify and nurture talent ought to be making contributions to these systems – an essential and highly valued behaviour from those they develop.