The parties are over. We probably won’t drink champagne again until the next wedding, and a third of those who made a resolution to lose weight or work out more have not done anything about it. Here are four talent development challenges you will probably face this year.
How fast can you learn? In a recent post on Edge Perspectives, John Hagel noted the following: “In a more rapidly changing world, our success and, in a very real sense, our survival, depends on our ability to learn faster and accelerate the development of our talent.”
That may seem hard enough, but it’s only a third of this challenge. Skills don’t all decrease in effectiveness at the same rate. So you must be able identify which skills need replacing. Then, you have to unwind the habits and support systems that helped people succeed at the old skill, while you create new habits and support systems.
What are you doing for people who don’t want to lead? There are lots of them in the workforce. Some want to simply practice their craft with ever-increasing challenges. Some want to move about from project to project, learning something different at every move. And some simply want to come in, do their work, and go home.
How are you adapting to an increasingly dispersed workforce? My observation is that, with the exception of salespeople, we simply haven’t thought about how to develop the talent of the people who used to work in our offices but now work somewhere else most of the time.
Are you preparing your people for a world where planning is less important than adapting? In a world where things change more and more rapidly, planning becomes less reliable and adapting becomes more important. Do we have a clue what that means for talent development?
