Waste of Talent !

Recognising the wastes of Talent can be one of the greatest opportunities for organisation to improve performance. This is food for thought and I want to dissect the issues pertaining to this phenomenon

How is the organisation changing the rules of their expectations ? Is organisation looking for new ways to accomplish more with fewer resources ? With all the challenges, how does the organisation view the capabilites of employees ? Does it see the waste of people's abilities as part of the solution?

If people are mostly conducting business as usual,improvements will be limited.New strategies are hindered by misaligned efforts.A small portion of people are engaged to drive success.So why then do workplaces waste talent and abilities to such a large degree ?

In many organisations, the typical work roles are still relatively narrow in scope and focus on precise tasks instead of what people could contribute.In addition,leadership structures are designed to keep power and authority to a few, with everyone else having little of either.Beyond the mindset of leadership,processes need to be created to channel more of what people can deliver in a work day.

A pragmatic approach to put a structure across lean priniciples will help organisations appreciate the types of abilities that are commonly wasted while providing many of the processes that direct these abilities.
Let us look at the hidden causes ( much like the hidden factory in manufacturing) that will decipher how we can prevent waste of Talent

1. Work roles limit people by design ; Most people can do so much more!
Organisations put people in cross functional problem-solving teams and find many employees possess tremendous leadership skills that have gone unnoticed when they spend most of their time making products or handling goods with little interaction. It's not just a matter of rare abilities that could be uncovered, but that a significant number of people can lead,generate ideas,make decisions & perform other roles.
2. Power is limited to only a few people
The comfort of assigning power to a few is deeply ingrained and restricts much of the talent or abilities that could make a significant difference.With so much wasted ability,it becomes obvious that this situation provides some benefit to those in leadership roles.why?Managers often believe that they are in leadership roles because they think better,solve problems better and have more ability than those they lead.
3. People are reluctant to do more work
Have we asked this basic question "why do people/employees not participate more fully in most endeavors"? A familier response could be "people do not want to do any more than they are paid for in their jobs" -The discretionery effort in HR Parlance.A prevalent assumption exists that people could do more ,but they don't want to do more.In fairness some of this is true.Another notion is that
managers feel if they are the part of some problem solving exercise,they invariably would end up
solving it at their discretionery effort and time(with or without the help of reportees)...and workload would increase
4.Channeling abilities creates new work
People are generally afraid of doing something new often because they are afraid of failing.Beyond problems with common attitudes,many workplaces lack the processes needed to manage the output of people's abilities.The problem with allowing people to contribute more is that those activities create more activities and even more activities
5.There is no assigned cost to people working at lower capacity
The massive waste of people's abilities means that most organisations achieve only a fraction of what they could accomplish.The acceptance of this situation is notably reflected in the lack of any reference to or concern about the unused capacity of the workforce.Most assets of the business are assessed in terms of capacity ,such as building or equipment utilisation. However management teams rarely discuss the percentage of peoples abilities being utilised each day.

The spirit of Lean is based on the vision that each worker is greater than the sum of his or her tasks and is capable of solving systemic problems of the organisation ,generating improved methods of operating, and working with other people in ways that generate better results over time.

Sd/-
Roohul Haq
 

Potential Isn't Everything ?

I have always been tempted to understand the euphoria regarding potential assessment in organisation. So to make this clear, we dissect the essence of Talent strategy & management and unplug this mystery ...

 

One of the biggest overarching mistakes we see People managers and their organizations make is confusing performance, potential and readiness. It’s important to understand that each has a distinct definition:

·         Performance is how one is performing now in his or her current role.

·         Potential is one’s likelihood of leadership growth.

·         Readiness is one’s fit with a specific role, job, or job family.

 

Confusing these three concepts can lead to disastrous decisions about talent. Those who perform effectively in one job won’t necessarily succeed in a job at the next level. Those with potential need to be developed. And even those who have been identified as having potential and have benefited from development may still not be ready to take on a challenging role or job.

Let us look at this from an Olympic gymnastics coach perspective on what it takes to spot potential in young gymnasts. She looks for traits such as attitude and mental toughness in girls who are still years away from competing at the highest levels. Similarly, in business, when looking to identify those with leadership potential, it’s not current performance that matters (though current performance must be the starting point for identifying potential) as much as what sort of leader an individual is capable of growing into in the future.

Unfortunately, just 34 percent of companies feel that they are effective at identifying those with potential to lead early in their careers, yet those that do perform better. Common mistakes include:

·          Focusing on current performance alone

·          Inconsistent criteria

·          Unchallenged perspectives and opinions

·          “Promote your own” strategies

·          Singular focus on strengths (no consideration of leadership  derailers)

·           Identification without subsequent diagnosis of development  needs

Taking into account the critical differences between potential, performance and readiness, it’s our job to make sure the organization is doing an effective job of identifying those with the most leadership potential. Because resources (i.e.time, money, development opportunities) are always in finite supply, we have to be diligent about investing those resources in that small segment of our organization’s leaders—typically no more than 10 percent of the leader population that represents the greatest future payoff for the organization.

There are two different reasons to assess leaders:

1)      For potential and

2)      For readiness (performance is best ascertained by gathering performance feedback)

 When an individual is assessed for potential- the assessment will look at a number of factors, including: learning agility, drive and commitment, critical thinking, risk taking, perseverance, interpersonal savvy, receptivity to feedback, and propensity to lead. If individuals display these factors, there is a better chance they will succeed as they move up the leadership ladder.

 

Assessment of readiness- on the other hand, is done against the Success Profile for a specific role (e.g CFO, VP Marketing). This assessment provides a prediction or signal that someone is capable of moving into a specific role or position and succeeding.

 There is tremendous value in each of these assessments, as they both provide the objective data needed to understand current talent capability and gaps. This is why many highly effective organizations use both- using assessment for potential to focus on growth and assessment for readiness to inform promotion and placement decisions.

 

Plus, it’s far more effective than relying on being able to “spot” those who are ready for key jobs right now or those who can be developed to step into those jobs in the future.

 

So the interesting question is"Are we hyping the Potential Assessment too much"?

 

Sd/-

Roohul Haq