Fostering Talent To Unlock Value

I just can't resist pointing to this article,that appeared in Strategy + Business magazine. In this increasingly services led world, enterprise’s future growth and competitiveness depend more than ever before on attracting qualified workers - an increasingly scarce resource - and helping them work efficiently together within the organization. I work in an industry where welcoming 250 new faces as colleagues every week is an accepted norm. After all there is a definitive connection between top performers and superior corporate achievement, as a few studies have brought out.While earlier, the Mckinsey framework recommended action along five dimensions Viz ("Embrace a Talent Mindset," "Craft a Winning Employee Value Proposition," "Rebuild Your Recruiting Strategy," "Weave Development into Your Organization," and "Differentiate and Affirm Your People"), this article highlights the need to have a new look at talent from an inside perspective. The premise of the article is that classifying employees by their role in the success of your business rather than by their function can improve the effectiveness of recruiting, staff development, and deployment. It is a telling observation that if companies managed financial assets as carelessly as they do human assets, shareholders, auditors, and regulators would come down hard on them for inefficient use of funds. Pointing out that companies are unable to measure or manage their employees’ contribution to corporate value, the article comes with a new framework - .classifying an organization’s roles into four broad segments -creators, ambassadors,craft masters & drivers.The key distinction here is trying to look at talent horizontally across the business - the differences among these four segments are expressed in terms of talent valuation - that is, such attributes as knowledge, experience, skills, and personal interaction capabilities - and not in terms of organizational structures (such as business units) or in human resources management terms (such as age, education, seniority, or compensation). In an age where the rules and procedures of an organization can be an obstacle to segmentation and a force for “averaging” the treatment of individuals’ roles, and in a situation where organizations need to offer very specialised services, definitely a radical new look at the way talent gets categorised, nurtured and reviewed needs definite fresh and dynamic approaches. After all winning the people war is a crucial determinant of success for any organization.