DDI’s Talent Management Intelligence

Talent Resolution #2: Quit sacrificing talent

By Mike Hoban

In the world of athletics, only the naive or the uninformed would suggest that the best athletes make the best coaches.  There are different skill sets and motivations involved. Why then, do we in business, on an all too regular basis, make the error of thinking that the best individual contributors - the best accountants, engineers or nurses - will make good managers? Some do, of course, but many don’t, and in fact some make incompetent and unhappy managers, meaning we not only “lose” our best individual contributor (IC), we compound the problem by jeopardizing the performance and the morale of the work group he/she now leads. It’s shooting ourselves in both feet. 

We’ve known for decades about that fallacy, yet like a bad habit we can’t seem to overcome, or that we choose to ignore, the practice remains. And because of limited and plateaued career paths for ICs, many of the promising ones enter the management track because it’s the only game in town. Or they go somewhere else where they feel more appreciated as a highly respected contributor. 

Organizations need to stop assuming their best performers will be their next generation of leaders. Here are some steps they can take instead:

• Expand the IC “Track” - Create extended technical ladders/professional sequences to provide pay and recognition for “mastery level” ICs that are more in parity to those of the managerial track.  In investment firms, the star traders almost always earn more – sometimes far more - than do their managers;
• Don’t Assume…- Before putting a well regarded IC’s name onto the high potential list in a talent review, ensure that someone has had a conversation with him/her to see whether he/she is even interested in a management track.  A recent DDI study found a whopping 61% of ICs surveyed indicated they had no aspirations to become supervisors or managers.  Too often it’s don’t-ask-don’t-tell;  
• Provide trial assignments - Provide temporary management-lite assignments (like handling some quasi-management duties while the supervisor is on vacation) for ICs to give them a taste of what management work feels like; 
• Assess and Test - Provide assessments or simulations to ICs so they can experience management work and so the organization can also identify individuals who score well and have the motivation to explore the management track.

Mike Hoban is a senior consultant for Development Dimensions International (DDI).

Follow the series 10 Talent Resolutions for 2010.

Talent Resolution #3: Ask more, tell less

By Heather Daigle

2009's been rough. Difficult business decisions were surely made – cutting employee benefits and curbing anticipated promotions – leaving your talent feeling helpless in the face of changes they can’t control.

Yet, brain science reveals that the less “in control” we feel, the more inhibited the creative and productive processing of our brain’s prefrontal cortex becomes. According to the SCARF model developed by David Rock, founder of the NeuroLeadership Institute, when we feel restricted, our brain interprets this as a threat, redirecting essential resources away from the area of our brain responsible for cognitive processing. In essence, when our brain goes into threat management mode, our ability to think critically is diminished. Therefore, maintaining the perception of autonomy is essential for individual productivity and employee engagement. We produce our best work when we feel as though we’re acting out of our own desire and volition.

Moving forward in 2010, resolve to let go of the reins just a little. From a strategy perspective, consider where your organization can afford to offer more choices to employees – even two choices are better than none. Moreover, encourage managers to avoid “dumping” work on their reports. Instead, inspire them to open up dialogue. What are the individuals’ goals and how do those align with strategic business objectives?

It’s instinctive to want to regulate “optimal performance” with processes, procedures and best practices. However, making business objectives crystal clear, setting parameters – not regulations – for performance, and offering up some decision-making control to employees can go a long way to restoring the engagement, well-being and productivity of your talent.

Follow the series 10 Talent Resolutions for 2010. 

Heather Daigle is an independent global human capital specialist who creates learning, engagement, coaching and collaboration solutions that align with the way the mind works. Having spent over five years in Shanghai, China, Heather loves exploring cultural differences in motivation and patterns of thought as they relate to talent development and employee engagement, which she writes about in her blog Speak the Culture. She resides in Chicago, IL and holds a Master’s degree in Learning and Organizational Change from Northwestern University.

Talent Resolution #4: Manage your millennials

By Alexandra Levit

Everyone says that this new crop of twenty-something employees is different. On the good side, they’re innovative, entrepreneurial, and devoted to changing organizations for the better. But on the negative side, they tend to come into their first jobs with a sense of entitlement and typically experience lower productivity and higher turnover than other employees. In 2010, resolve to improve the degree to which your twenty-somethings contribute to the bottom line.

Help them to establish profitable relationships. You can help Millennials get up to speed more quickly by showing them how to navigate your organization’s social and political scene. Introduce them to the people they need to meet, have frank conversations about so-called unwritten rules, and schedule daily or weekly check-ins so that they feel like they’re being heard without being in your office every five minutes.

Encourage them to show controlled initiative. Millennials are blazing trails of ambitious fire. When looking for ways to prove their worth, they are safest if they start small. Ask them probing questions such as: What does the organization or department need and how can you use your unique talents to provide it?

Get them on the path to mastering transferable skills. Millennials need to de-emphasize the importance of getting more responsibility as soon as possible. Direct them to set short and long-term career goals and take on projects that will allow them to develop critical career skills like project and time management, communication, and budgeting. 

Follow the series 10 Talent Resolutions for 2010.

Alexandra Levit is the author of Millennial Tweet: 140 Bite-Sized Ideas for Managing the Millennials (http://happyabout.info/millennialtweet01.php).  Born at the tail end of Generation X herself, she serves as a bridge of understanding and collaboration between older workers and the new college graduates just entering the workplace.  Levit speaks frequently at corporations and conferences around the country and writes a weekly column for the Wall Street Journal.  Learn more at www.alexandralevit.com.

Top 10 Talent Resolutions for 2010

Have you made your resolutions yet? To wrap up 2009, DDI asked 10 thought leaders in management, human resources and training and development what talent resolution they think organizations should make.

Throughout the month of December and through January 4, we’ll count down 10 nuggets of wisdom from:

• #10 - Barry Stern, Vice President Consulting Services and Delivery at DDI—“Live in the crisis mindset”
• #9 - Ellen McGirt, Senior Writer for Fast Company magazine—“Be the love.”
• #8 - Dan McCarthy, Blogger and Leadership Development Manager—“Repair the reputation of leadership”
• #7 - Peter Cappelli, George W. Taylor Professor of Management at The Wharton School— “Pull your head out of the sand”
• #6 - John Hollon, Editor of Workforce magazine—“Walk the talk“
• #5 - Matt Paese, Vice President, Executive Solutions at DDI—“Vaccinate: for growth”
• #4 - Alexandra Levit, author and Wall Street Journal columnist—“Manage your millenials”
• #3 - Heather Daigle, blogger and human capital specialist—“Ask more, tell less”
• #2 - Mike Hoban, Senior Consultant, DDI—“Quit sacrificing talent”
• #1 - Josh Bersin, CEO and President, Bersin & Associates—“Expand succession management to talent mobility”

Join the dialogue and share your own resolution. What do you plan to change in 2010?

Talent Resolution #5: Vaccinate: for growth

By Matt Paese, Ph.D.

Roll up your sleeve, squeeze your fist, and if you need to, look away.  This won’t hurt a bit.  It also might not work.

Seems that lots of organizations are feverish these days, suffering from disengaged workforces, leadership under-performance, and at the same time, deeply slashed talent management budgets. 

But these aren’t our worst ailments. I hate to say it, but true talent growth won’t happen because we have great HR programs. Yes, we need these to perpetuate our efforts, but we need something much more basic: we need to be less afraid of our own growth.

Not afraid you say? Ask yourself how much change is needed in your organization.  Now think of the biggest change you’ve made recently (at work).  Be honest.  Does the rate of individual growth meet the demand for it? 

Growth and fear are brothers. As we strive forward, each of us faces our own fears and responds in our own unique ways. 

• The executive who fears her unit is failing responds with aggression and micromanagement
• The software engineer fears layoffs and responds with apathy
• The middle manager fears more strategic confusion and resists change

How do we prevent these well-warranted fears from derailing our efforts, and our growth? We must erect mechanisms to process our vulnerabilities.  Sound too psychological? It’s not. It’s quite simple.

Find the places in your organization where conversations about talent take place, and ask yourself if those are safe places for people to be open and candid, and if the resources and encouragement are there to make it happen. Start by making the unsafe places safer and more truthful.

Vaccination presumes that we have the antidote inside us. The vaccination simply awakens it. So, what vaccinates against our fears? Honesty. Courage. Cooperation.  Authenticity. Humility. And striving to be better. These virtues live in our nature.

This year, let’s take the shot, confront what makes us afraid, together, and turn fear into growth. Talent managers? You have to administer the shot.

Follow the series 10 Talent Resolutions for 2010.

Matt Paese is the Vice President of Executive Solutions for  Development Dimensions International (DDI)

Talent Resolution #6: Walk the talk

By John Hollon

I don’t know about you, but I get awfully tired of hearing executives prattle on about how “people are our most important resource.” Wouldn’t you love, once and for all, to hear someone say it and actually show that they mean it?

That’s the resolution I think organizations should adopt in 2010: to push out of this recession by leveraging their most important asset and actually investing in their people.

Given how workers have been beaten down over this past year with an endless cycle of layoffs and buyouts, pay cuts and furloughs, it’s important for business leaders to send a positive signal that they still believe in the importance of investing in their people and their long-term growth.

Investing doesn’t necessarily mean paying them more or rolling back the furlough days (although that would be a nice gesture, too), but rather, it means doing things to help workers grow professionally—like letting them take on a special project, or helping them to upgrade their skills.

In other words, businesses everywhere need to truly engage workers and help them get past the bad feelings that so many have about their organizations and their jobs. With a possible economic recovery on the horizon, it is time for America’s business leaders to step up and start helping America’s workforce out of its funk. Investing in the workforce, if it truly is the organization’s “most important resource,” is a smart resolution not only for this New Year, but a smart investment for years to come.

Follow the series 10 Talent Resolutions for 2010.

John Hollon is the editor of Workforce Management, a Crain Communications’ publication based in Irvine, California. He directs all editorial staff and content for the monthly print magazine, 10 monthly newsletters (including Workforce Week, Workforce Recruiting, and Workforce Benefits), and Workforce.com, the web site of Workforce Management.  He also writes an award-winning magazine column, The Last Word, and an award-winning online blog, The Business of Management.

Talent Resolution #7: Pull your head out of the sand

By Peter Cappelli

My resolution for the year would be to get serious about addressing the issue of uncertainty in business. If you don’t think this is an issue, ask how well your own organization did in forecasting the 2008 financial crash. Virtually no one saw this coming, of course, just as no one saw the sharp jump in oil prices in the mid-2000s, the terrorist attacks in 2001 and the associated business slump, the Y2K boom and bust, etc.  

The competitive environment for businesses is so changeable and firms adjust their own strategies and practices so frequently that business forecasts are rarely accurate. The error rate in the US on a one-year forecast of demand at the SKU code or individual product level, for example, is over 30 percent, and long-term forecasts are essentially worthless in all but the most predictable operations. Even in stable industries like public utilities, an unexpected CEO change or a restructuring program can throw all plans up in the air. 

What does this mean for human resources?  It means that exercises that require long-term forecasts – workforce planning, succession planning, etc. – just don’t work because those forecasts are rarely right.  Perhaps that’s why so many companies simply don’t do them anymore. Assuming blindly that our forecasts will work out is simply putting our heads in the sand. But doing nothing to address the future doesn’t make sense, either. 

Instead, what we should do is what has been done in many other contexts, from the military to foreign policy: First, try to get our hands around the uncertainty. What aspect of our business environment is reasonably stable, which aspects are changeable, what are the different possibilities for outcomes? Second, once we have a sense of the range of possibilities, what can we do to adapt to the uncertainty?  Are there any actions we can take that are “robust,” that is, they make sense across most of the possible outcomes? 

Finally, how can we be more responsive so that we can adjust to inevitable changes in what the business requires of human resources?

Follow the series 10 Talent Resolutions for 2010.

Peter Cappelli is the George W. Taylor Professor of Management at The Wharton School and Director of Wharton’s Center for Human Resources.  He has degrees in industrial relations from Cornell University and in labor economics from Oxford where he was a Fulbright Scholar. He currently serves on commissions for The Business Roundtable, the World Economic Forum, and the U.S. Department of Labor. His latest book Talent on Demand: Managing Talent in an Age of Uncertainty (Harvard Business 2008), outlines the strategies that employers should consider in developing and managing talent.

Talent Resolution #8: Repair the reputation of leadership

By Dan McCarthy

Help Wanted: Aspiring Leaders.

According to DDI’s “Pulse of the Workforce” report, Sixty-two percent of the individual contributors surveyed have no aspiration to assume a management role.

Wow - it seems leadership has a serious branding issue!

In the horserace to find and develop our next generation of leaders, almost two-thirds of the horses are scratched before the race has even begun. If you think we’re in a leadership crisis now, we’re going to be in an even deeper crisis if we don’t do something to make the role of a leader more appealing to our best and brightest.

Here is my advice for 2010 to repair the reputation of leadership:

1. Throw the bums out.
Let’s start holding leaders accountable. It’s a few bad apples – probably only 10% - that are getting all the attention and tarnishing the image of leadership. 

2. Recognize and celebrate the great leaders.
Great leaders are all around us – we just need to open our eyes and look for them. We then need to recognize and reward them, and expose people to them as role models and mentors.

3. Support our leaders.
Most leaders have good intentions but are often set up to fail. Let’s try to have more realistic expectations of our leaders, provide them the development needed to succeed, and help clear their plates of the bureaucratic nonsense that’s getting in their way of leading. Finally, while it’s way easier to point fingers, we can all work on becoming better followers.

Follow the series of 10 Talent Resolutions for 2010

Dan McCarthy is the author of the award-winning leadership development blog Great Leadership, which draws on his 20-plus years of experience in the field of leadership development. He is currently the manager of leadership and management development at a Fortune “Great Place to Work,” “Training Top 125″, and “High Impact Learning” (HILO 80) company. Dan is a member of the SmartBrief on Workforce Advisory Board, and an influential social media voice in talent management.

Talent Resolution #9: Be the love.

By Ellen McGirt

“Platform” is a term we're hearing a lot lately in business circles. Everything, from soap brands to social networks, are now platforms. (Last year, the popular word was “algorithm” for those playing at home. Next year, I predict it will be “exhaustion.”)

The concept owes its recent popularity to tech outfits like Apple, Microsoft, Sony, Twitter and Facebook, who have opened up their own platforms to become, uh, platforms on which talented developers build cool applications and ultimately profitable businesses.  It’s nothing to chuckle at: The Facebook application that let users digitally “throw a sheep” at a friend, reportedly raked in about a million dollars in their first year.  Not such a bad thing, really. And no sheep were harmed.

But long before we were friending and tweeting and iPhoning, business had the potential to be a platform of a different sort, places where conscientious and creative people could trade their synapse energy and sweat for something that no amount of money can actually buy.  It still does. Meaningful work, when matched with leadership that is committed to the development of others, becomes its own scaling mechanism, one that grows a business as surely as mergers, acquisitions and accounting tricks.

When people get to become better versions of themselves, by virtue of the work they do, the world changes for the better. It is the ultimate expression of love in business, work as a transformational activity. This year, manage to that.

When she's not chasing future Presidents or leaping social networks in a single bound, Ellen McGirt occasionally shows up at her job at Fast Company Magazine. As a senior writer she covers a range of business topics, but never stops looking for the writer’s holy grail: The business ideas - and people - who are changing the world. In three years she's written nine cover stories, including studies of Facebook, Cisco, Intel, the Obama brand and Ashton Kutcher. She has recently set her sights online as Dean of Fast Company's "Thirty Second MBA" video series on leadership.

Follow the series of 10 Talent Resolutions for 2010.

Talent Resolution #10: Live in the crisis mindset

By Barry Stern, Ph.D.

It’s time for you to admit it. The last months have caffeinated your world. There’s part of you, regardless of your specific plight, that has found this whole economic mess energizing. Somewhere along the line you decided that you were either going to go fetal or grab for the gusto. And grab you did. You “changed your game” and “did more with less”; thereby developing new muscles, stamina and courage you didn’t know you had. It’s been months since you used the word “proactive” and yet now you actually understand what it means, even in the midst of crises. The term “lifelong learning” actually means something to you. And you found yourself either sitting in a boardroom or at less oxygen-rich organizational levels than those you customarily inhabit.

Eight months ago that craggy jerk who wouldn’t take your calls for the last two years walked into your office, a dumb smile molded onto his face, and asked you to help keep him out of court as he got rid of 20% of his fatso organization. And you did it. And he’s your new best friend and somehow not quite so craggy.

Crises are mobilizing. As new sales plummet and loyal customers flee, the warts on our corporate structures reveal themselves in high ugly relief.  People become figure instead of ground.  As a result, HR professionals are reincarnated as mission critical.  So let’s reflect for a moment as to how you rose to the occasion: 

1. You asked questions to clarify what the end game was unflinchingly and offered your passionate suggestions with nary a thought of intimidation or politics.
2. You resisted your temptation to gather still more data before acting, figuring you were smart enough not to make really silly mistakes.
3. You didn’t define your mistakes as “really silly,” fixed them, and never lost a beat.
4. You implemented while learning and found that you’re pretty good at it.
5. You developed a new personal equilibrium coupled with deepened organizational credibility.

Aren’t you sad all this fun might end? If it does, don’t lose your edge. And if not, I know you will carry on.  Either way, don’t worry. Your secret is safe with me.

Follow the series 10 Talent Resolutions for 2010.

Barry Stern is vice president, Consulting Services and Delivery for Development Dimensions International (DDI). Follow him on Twitter.