In May of 2006, Mckinsey published a study entitled "The People Problem in Talent Management" that highlighted the eight most critical obstacles to instilling talent management within organizations. A few of the obstacles include, senior managers do not spend enough high-quality time on talent management, senior leaders do not align talent startegies to business strategy, succession planning and resource allocation processes are not rigorous enough to match the right people to the right roles. In the past year and a half have we made progress in removing some of these barriers?
In the article one leader was quoted "Habits of mind are the real barriers to talent management". I have to beleive we are making progress based on the work that Knowledge Infusion is involved in with several of our clients. We are shifting minds, HR leaders along with senior leaders are at the table having discussions about talent strategies and aligning to the business strategy, investments are being made in transforming business processes and breaking down the silo's. It is my belief that 40% of the effort in making talent management stick within an organization is all about the people. We must shift minds before we will see the real value of process changes and technology investment.
Would love to hear some success stories in shifting minds...
Check out the link below to see the detail in the McKinsey study.
http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/Organization/Talent/The_people_problem_in_talent_management_1755
Hi Kim
Yesterday I chaired the SFIA Capability Management Conference 2007, here in London (http://www.sfia.org.uk/). The message is very much that habits of mind are still the real issue in instilling Talent Management. On the other hand, there are some success stories.
One is what IBM have done at the IT department of Norwich Union, the UK's largest insurer. Here's the case study:
http://www-935.ibm.com/services/us/gbs/bus/pdf/g510-6604-00.pdf
I have to declare an interest here. Norwich Union uses InfoBasis software to track the skills of employees within this solution. However, it's worth noting that the technology is not the issue, it's getting people's involvement at all levels.
Executives need to be convinced of the value of this, and to keep supporting initiatives after the initial push. Managers need to be given the environment where they have the time to get involved, and a good reason for doing so, and employees need to feel there's something in it for them.
After you get all that change management in place, the software is just the plumbing.
There were other good case studies of making this work at the conference, including HMRC (the Revenue department) and BP. If you'd like more information, just drop me a mail: donaldt@infobasis.com.
I'd be very interested in learning about any more success stories (and of the hard-learned lessons in making it work).
Best regards
Don