Every week, I review blogs that cover talent development to find you the pick of the lot for the week. In this post, you’ll find pointers to pieces about bench strength, talent management at UPS, when to start thinking about “selling” the hire, treating star performers like star performers, and the leader as talent spotter.
From the Talent Management Blog: Why You Need a Strong Talent Bench
“One of HCI’s recent daily mailings contained a link to an interesting article from Harvard Business Review, called When Growth Stalls, by Matthew S. Olson, Derek van Bever and Seth Verry. The article states that: “Successful companies lose momentum for four main reasons. All are within management’s control if spotted in time.†It goes on to identify the 4 main reasons why companies stall; one of them being the lack of a strong talent bench. They characterize this as “a lack of leaders and staff with the skills and capabilities required for strategy execution.—
Wally’s Comment: This is a good post, with pointers to an excellent HBR article. Be careful, though. The authors of the article titled “When Growth Stalls” wrote an excellent book a couple of years ago, titled Stall Points. To add to the confusion, there’s also a book called When Growth Stalls, written by Steve McKee.
Don’t despair, though. Consider it an opportunity to double your learning. Both books are good and they look at stalls along the growth curve from different perspectives. From a talent management perspective, Stall Points and the article “When Growth Stalls” will be most helpful.
From Talent Management: Going Door to Door: Talent at UPS
“According to Amy Whitley, vice president of human resources at UPS, promoting from within defines UPS’s approach to talent management; any given employee of the international shipping company has likely learned it from the ground up. Whitley discussed with Talent Management how this approach helps keep everyone at UPS on the same street.”
Wally’s Comment: UPS is a great place to look if you’re considering promoting from within because that’s how they’ve done things for a very long time. The current CEO, Scott Davis, has been with UPS since the firm he worked for was acquired by them. The two previous CEOs both spent their entire career at UPS. One of them, Jim Kelly, started as a package delivery driver.
From the Human Capital Institute: Executive Moves: Begin with the End in Mind
“It’s time for crafting and extending the offer. And, as SVP Human Resources, it’s your job to figure out “now that we’ve given the nod to Samantha Pink – by all measures our best candidate – how are we going to convince her to move for this job?†Oops. Too late. Anything you do at this point to “convince†Samantha will rarely amount to more than just rolling the dice. The “convincing†process should have begun the day she came onto your radar screen as a potential candidate. “
Wally’s Comment: Hiring, especially hiring, upper level people, is a courtship. It’s good to start making your case early. The authors suggest three specific things you can do to become more effective
From Performance Management: When Unequal Is Better
“They’re called top talent, A-players or star performers. They drive hard and deliver results. They might be an organization’s current leaders or its crop of future executives. They might be particularly high performing or recognized for their high potential. Regardless of what they’re called or how they’re classified, top performers require special handling, and talent managers must be prepared for it. Many organizations reward and recognize their top performers with money. Combined with other benefits, the profit motive is an important part of the tool kit to motivate and engage them. But focusing heavily on compensation may skirt top talent’s primary motivation.”
Wally’s Comment: This is a great post with some sensible looks at both compensation and motivation for top performers.
From Building Better Leaders: Develop Your Talent Scouting Skills
“The best leaders that I know are also the best talent scouts. They are acute observers of people and extraordinarily quick to identify individuals with potential.”
From Simply Lisa: How To Make Exceptional Staffing Decisions
“One of the most important things a leader can do is staff their department to deliver. A leader’s job is not to know it all. A leaders without anyone on their staff who can design a recruitment strategy better than they can or who is better at [fill in the blank] than they are, is not doing their job.”
Wally’s Comment: Yes, you can consider this the bonus round. Both these excellent posts consider the role of the leader as talent spotter. Read them together.
