Every week, I review blogs that cover talent development to find the very best talent development posts. This week, you’ll find pointers to pieces about onboarding, hiring, informal learning, and using action learning at the core of your talent management program.
From Dan McCarthy: New Leader Onboarding: Stakeholder Interviews
“An effective new leader onboarding process can greatly reduce the time it takes a new leader to get up to speed, improve teamwork, and improve retention. Most organizations do a pretty decent job at the basics, i.e., a meeting with the boss, the team, and a few key stakeholders, directions to the rest room and cafeteria, etc”
Wally’s Comment: Whenever you bring in a new leader from outside, it challenges your company, the leader, and the leader’s team. Dan McCarthy reviews the process and suggests ways to improve it. He suggests that stakeholder interviews should be part of the process. That makes sense to me. It’s an effective practice that many leaders coming in to a company from outside will do on their own. Making them part of the process assures that this excellent practice will happen every time.
From Mel Kleiman via TLNT: Hiring Wisdom: 12 Reasons Why Managers Need to Do a Better Job
“Here are 12 reasons why managers need to do a better job of hiring, motivating, and retaining great employees in today’s turbulent times.”
Wally’s Comment: Mel Kleiman knows hiring about as well as anyone, so when he writes something about hiring, it’s going to be a good read with good ideas.
From Harold Jarche: Informal learning is a business imperative
“Supporting informal learning and helping connect tacit knowledge in the enterprise are now business imperatives, not just something extra. The valued work in the enterprise is increasing in variety and decreasing in standardization. It is moving to the edge. Organizations that do not optimize informal learning may themselves get automated and outsourced.”
Wally’s Comment: Informal learning has always been part of business and companies who made an effort to facilitate it reaped competitive advantage. Harold Jarche suggests that facilitating informal learning has moved from competitive advantage to “table stakes” for those who want to remain competitive.
“The current economic landscape affords companies the opportunity to fully develop leadership talent against a backdrop of genuine challenge and tangible uncertainty—attributes integral to an effective action-learning program.”
Wally’s Comment: The authors of this article suggest that Action Learning is the perfect tool for developing high potential leaders against the backdrop of economic challenge and uncertainty.
Carnivals, Lists, and Such
From Bersin: Update from TaleoWorld 2011: Talent Intelligence, Mobile, and LinkedIn Partnership
“This week Taleo held their annual user conference and attracted more than 1,600 customers. As part of the event Taleo introduced two new product enhancements – one called Taleo Radar and the other a major announcement with LinkedIn. In this blog I will discuss Taleo’s strategy and talent intelligence story, and overview the Radar and LinkedIn announcements. “
