DDI’s Talent Management Intelligence

Manage Through Culture: Inspiring Performance in the Chinese Workforce

By Heather Daigle

During my recent trip to Shanghai - my former home of five years - I had the pleasure of speaking with a number of consultants, talent leaders and front-line managers on the latest developments in managing and motivating talent. When I left China in 2007, talent management practices had not yet fully taken shape. Now, talent has become a hot topic, and I wanted to know – what is working?

Through my conversations, I heard many tales of failures, such as companies investing in external trainers who bring little to no value or transformation. As I probed deeply for the keys to success, a theme began to emerge: managing through culture. 

Culture is far from a foreign concept to Chinese employees. The rich history, traditions and norms of Chinese society, combined with its collectivistic roots, render organizational culture a powerful metaphor.  Even as old traditions are abandoned in favor of new conventions in modern society, Chinese culture engenders strong pride and loyalty among people.

What does this mean for organizations operating in China? It means that intentionally crafting and reinforcing organizational and team cultures can be a compelling source of clarity, motivation and growth for the workforce. At an organizational level, communicating strategies, objectives and operational tactics through a united cultural lens can trigger collectivistic mindsets, enabling employees to integrate their identities with that of the company. For the Chinese employee, this can be tremendously motivating.

For managers, it’s about creating and embodying a strong team culture. By establishing and promoting team unity, group norms and shared goals, managers can inspire team loyalty and encourage collaboration. Rooting individual performance expectations in the culture of the team and organization can facilitate intrinsic motivation and an individual drive for results.

A Chinese friend and manager at a leading global software organization shared his perspective on managing through culture. “I expect my reports to go to the front line of the battle for me, to be willing to die for me,” he confided (metaphorically speaking, of course). “But, this means I must be willing to die for them.” Only when managers and leaders in China fully embed themselves in the culture they promote – when loyalty is reciprocal -- can they inspire a high performing team.

But here’s the catch: modern Chinese society is riddled with individualistic goals and pursuits. The potential for inspiring motivation and drive through unity and shared identity is there – much more so than in Western environments – but it requires deliberate action to create, sustain and manage through culture. If culture and team cohesion are left up to chance, employees are likely to take the individualistic approach and pursue their own goals, perhaps at the expense of their teammates or companies.

Our guest blogger, Heather Daigle, is the Director of Organizational Development for Rolling Forecast Solutions, LLC and explores global talent issues in her blog Speak the Culture

Innovative, Simple Solutions for a Complex World….

By Mark Dembo

…was the theme at the Conference Board’s Talent Management Strategies Conference held this week in New York.   It was a great privilege to spend two days with well over 100 talent management professionals sharing ideas, knowledge and best practices.

Having attended many events like this over the past several years one thing in particular struck me throughout the conference; for the first time in well over two years there was a remarkable upbeat and optimistic tone.  Discussions both formal and informal were about a return to growth, about accelerating development of key talent, and even – yes it’s true – about the “war for talent” being stronger than ever!

The theme of the conference certainly stuck a nerve with the challenges so many organizations were talking about. It goes something like this:

Question: “How do we get our arms around this behemoth called ‘Integrated Talent Management’? With increased globalization, a flatter and more matrixed organization structure, more demands on people’s time, differing needs for different generations and geographies and business units – how do we communicate and implement a coherent talent strategy with a cohesive set of talent tools and processes that meet the needs of all our constituents and stakeholders that allow us to make meaningful decisions about people, while keeping people engaged, and ensuring that development is focused, meaningful, and measureable?  Oh, and we also need to have all of this online in multiple languages with all these systems being able to talk to each other… And, we need to have this in place now!”  (Whoa- first, take a minute to catch your breath after reading that…)

Or, perhaps another way to ask the question: “How do you eat an elephant?”

Answer: ONE BITE AT A TIME…

See, the reality is that these are some very complex challenges – and there is no single, simple solution.  Of course, what makes the challenges of 21^st Century Talent Management so complex is that we are not dealing with widgets or machines or “things” – we are dealing with people. People who have been through the ringer the past few years and are still uncertain about what the future might hold.  So, taking all of these things into account, there were some very helpful takeaways from the Conference that emerged:

1.       More than ever – the starting point for Talent Strategy MUST be the Business Drivers! This is more than about HR having its rightful seat at the table – this is about ensuring that you are focusing efforts on the areas that will have the most impact for the business. Talent Management in a vacuum just simply won’t fly today. 

2.       The most effective talent management strategies are integrated. More than just about having “end-to-end talent management software” effective integration is about communication and education; ensuring that all stakeholders understand how one aspect of talent management is tied to another. And the most important underpinning to integrate talent processes is a cohesive set of competencies and success profiles for all key roles that are used consistently for talent selection, promotion, development, performance management, and succession planning.

3.       Need to balance global and local; in our increased global world, effective integrated talent management needs to balance global consistency with local flexibility.  

4.       The Talent Management function should be the catalyst and the steward – but the business leaders need to take ownership for effective talent development.

5.       You can’t do it all it once!  Start by articulating the business drivers and success profiles – then based on your organization’s culture, maturity, as well as opportunities and challenges -determine the best place to start. Look for the small victories that can add up over time. Look for continual improvement over time.

6.       Don’t overlook the leaders most often overlooked; the mid-level. These folks have more pressures than ever – their role is more complicated, more global, and more directly involved in execution of strategy.

7.       “Great can be the enemy of good” – don’t wait until everything is perfect; it never will be. 

Finally, an incredibly insightful comment, offered by Ray Peloso, Executive Vice President, Consumer Finance - Debt Management at RBS Citizens; “A life alerting recession is a terrible thing to waste.”    Emerging from the world of the past few years provided us with a new lens, a renewed sense of urgency, and some important lessons. Let’s not forget the lessons learned and carry those forward to continually improve our talent and our organizations.

Mark Dembo is a manager with Development Dimensions International (DDI).

How Can Coaching Drive Revenue Growth?

By Mark Dembo

Now that the dust of the “New Year” has settled into this long winter of 2011, the focus for many organizations has turned to rapid execution of strategy. As we’ve weathered the economic storms of the past few years and now with some partial clearing on the horizon, organizations are seeking to take advantage of the glimmers of economic sunshine by becoming laser focused on ensuring that goals are met as efficiently and expeditiously as possible. We’ve all learned that we can’t sit back and rest on our laurels – things can turn on a dime and we must be ready for it.

Along with this, is an increasingly sharp focus on sales performance. In fact, many companies have shifted the focus of executive compensation away from just stock price or EPS growth, supplanted with a much stronger emphasis on revenue growth.

HR and Talent Management professionals can and should be playing an important role in spurring on that sales growth by providing the resources and guidance to ensure that the RIGHT type of sales and sales leadership skills are being acquired, developed and retained.

While this may not be earth-shattering news, there are some interesting twists to consider that run contrary to traditional thinking. Effective sales leadership isn’t just about coaching and prodding salespeople.

In fact, the Sales Executive Council recently published some very interesting research that points out that sales leaders may oftentimes be focusing their coaching effort on the WRONG people. As reported by the Harvard Business Review, the tendency to focus coaching at the “tails” of the sales team is the wrong approach;

“The real payoff from good coaching lies among the middle 60% — your core performers. For this group, the best-quality coaching can improve performance up to 19%. In fact, even moderate improvement in coaching quality — simply from below to above average — can mean a six to eight percent increase in performance across 50% of your sales force….

At the end of the day, who your managers coach is just as important as how they coach.”
I leave you with three questions to ponder:

1. What are you doing to ensure that you know who your bottom, middle, and top sales performers are, and who among that group has the best potential and motivation to improve in a changing sales environment?
2. Do your sales leaders have the right information to know where to focus their efforts?
3. How are you equipping your sales leaders to improve and focus their coaching efforts on the right people?

Think about it – the future growth of your organization is riding on the answers to these questions!

Mark Dembo is a manager with Development Dimensions International (DDI).

Is your HR initiative a Sinking Ship?

By Verity Bissett-Powell

I am fascinated by a recent story which emerged from the granddaughter of Titanic’s Second Officer. Louise Patten has declared that confusion about steering orders was responsible for the ship’s sinking.

According to Mrs Patten, the tragedy occurred due to a change in shipping communications from sail to steam. Two steering systems were in operation at that time and they were the complete opposite of one another. Rather crucially, a command to turn ‘hard a-starboard’ meant turn the wheel right under one system and left under the other. The result of which was a helmsman turning Titanic towards the iceberg, with tragic results. The transition from Rudder Orders (steam ships) to Tiller Orders (sailing ships) had not been executed and communicated effectively.

Of course this is a very extreme example, but I started to wonder - how many times has a change been poorly implemented and had cruel consequences? My friend put petrol in his diesel car because the owner’s manual has “one size fits all” ambiguous text. A hotel worker taking several reservations before being told that the system was out of date and new software was being launched shortly. I was without an ATM card for a month because my bank was merged with another and the admin staff was overwhelmed. Just think, how many times have you personally experienced a poorly executed change?

None of you need to read another blog talking about the tough economic years we’re recently “enjoyed”, and I am sure you’re all encountering the knock-on effects…work smarter, do more with less, etc. Whatever the slogan, it all means changes to the talent within your organisation. If you are the one executing such transformations, just take a few minutes and ask yourself: Is your change implementation smooth sailing or a sinking ship?

Okay. Now take a deep breath and read on. Here are 5 recommendations for smoothly and successfully implementing a new talent management initiative:

1. Communication. Plan in advance how the initiative be communicated and consider how to sustain interest. How can you involve key stakeholders? How will you get the message down to the front-line in a personal way?
2. Accountability. Clearly identify roles and accountabilities for all key stakeholders. This means defining what each individual is accountable for, establishing measures of success, and creating a plan to cascade the accountabilities down to those who will be expected to make things happen.
3. Skills. Develop the skills of each key player in the implementation.  Realization often falls short because those who are accountable for execution don’t have the skills for implementation.
4. Alignment. Ally existing processes and systems to reinforce the desired outputs of your change. Is there a development or training system in place to support the initiative? What systems are in place to recognise and reward people during the life cycle of the change?
5. Measurement. Consider why you are doing this in the first place. How will you know that you were successful? Provide clear lead and lag measures on the desired outputs of the change.

Please note: these are not “nice to have” considerations, they are essential items which should appear on every planning agenda, for every change initiative, in every organisation. Don’t let poor change execution tarnish, what should be, a fantastic journey.

For more information on the Titanic revelation, click HERE.

 

Verity Bissett-Powell is a Business Development Executive in DDI UK.

The Competitive Advantage You Probably Overlook

By Victor L. Magdaraog

Once again, the strategic planning season is upon a majority of companies. It’s time to dust off those planning manuals and scorecards. As has been practiced for years, companies will look at the market, customers, competition and some of the usual suspects that might just jump in and grab market share.

After reviewing these external factors, companies craft their strategies, build new scorecards and plan for resources they require including that other resource called talent. In the process they continue to search for that ever elusive competitive advantage. That single element which will provide the firm the unique advantage in the market.

Unfortunately, this external view of strategy is not the best approach that will give an organization its strongest competitive strategy. In my view, the best place to begin with strategy formulation is to look internally and look intensely at the firm’s talent. Talent is the best source of competitive advantage. Jay Barney and Delwyn Clark in their book Resource-based Theory, refers to characteristics that are “imperfectly imitable” as a source of sustained competitive advantage. A talent view of strategy and the firm guarantees that the company will discover that “imperfectly imitable” dimension. To paraphrase John F. Kennedy, the talent of which I refer to is not a set of competencies, but rather a mix of individual talent – leaders, value creators and individual performers who all contribute to realize the company’s aspirations. It is this mix of talent that is imperfectly imitable.

Just how does one start with strategy formulation using talent as source of its competitive advantage? Every individual talent has his or her own unique markers in a manner of speaking. These markers are represented by the individual’s success profile – competencies, experiences, knowledge and personal attributes. These markers form the individual’s talent DNA. With detailed understanding of these success profiles, one can then understand the value that individuals are capable of creating. Paul Romer, an economist, posits that the new factors of economic growth are people, ideas and things. People develop ideas which in turn are converted into things – products, services, intellectual property. These individuals then with their unique success profiles create ideas which a firm can convert to products, services or intellectual capital.

As these individual success profiles are consolidated across the firm, the organization’s DNA appears in the shape of intellectual assets, capabilities, structural assets and relational assets. Intellectual assets are knowledge developed by individuals that the firm is able to patent or claim exclusive rights over.

Capabilities are organizational competencies that individual members have designed. Structural assets are processes and methodologies developed by employees , while relational assets are customer relationships, connections and networks established by associates over time. Relational assets include corporate culture as well.

It is this unique set of assets, assets which are the consolidation of individual success profiles that are the best source of that unique competitive advantage.

It is best to start your strategic planning process with a talent audit. A process to appraise the talent mix (leaders, value creators and individual performers) who all constitute the firm. These individuals have contributed to the firm’s accumulated wealth represented by the four assets – intellectual, capabilities, structural and relational. It is this wealth that is the source of that rare and imperfectly imitable competitive advantage.

When was the last time you took stock of your organization’s talent mix and the wealth they have accumulated? Before jumping into an external scan, take a long look at what you have inside the firm. You will be surprised with the wealth of talent that surrounds you.

Victor L. Magdaraog is a Vice President with Development Dimensions International (DDI) in the Philippines

HR: There’s an App for That

By Bradford Thomas

Greetings from the 13th Annual HR Technology conference in Chicago.

What a difference a few years makes. Three years ago I was walking through McCormick Place searching for cell coverage.  This year I'm on the floor of the conference trying to use the tiny keyboard on my Droid to write this blog.

What I'm seeing at the conference this year is the beginning of a technology shift within HR—one that will definitely make the life of HR practitioners much easier. Social media and smart phone applications are driving this shift . . .

Read the entire post on Brad's guest blog on SmartBlog on Workforce.

Bradford Thomas is a manager at Development Dimensions International (DDI).

Are We Ignoring Our Strengths?

By Rich Wellins, Ph.D.

I just got back from Manchester, England and I had the opportunity to introduce two workplace thought leaders: Marcus Buckingham (of Gallup and Strengths fame, whose bestselling book titles that include First Break All the Rules and Now, Discover Your Strengths) and Daniel Pink, author of yet another blockbuster, Drive. Both spoke about a different type of workplace, one that is based on trust, high autonomy, intrinsic (vs. extrinsic) motivation, self mastery and using one's strengths.

A timely topic after two miserable years.

I conducted my semi-annual "in-the-air" survey with a dozen people on the way over from the U.S. Thirteen out of the fifteen people I bothered on the flight felt the workplace was tougher and far crueler than two years ago. How bad? I asked them to choose between the worse of two evils: flying or going to work Monday mornings. Sixty percent hated work more than flying!

What got me thinking again was Buckingham's appeal again to design work around strengths. Engagement scores worldwide have gone nowhere. Buckingham says it’s no wonder considering that, on average, we spend less than 15% of our time working on things that relate to our strengths.

I gave some thought to that on the way back related to how our talent management approach can either hinder or accelerate a strengths-based approach. My thinking is that we are still far too focused on fixing "weaknesses" under the guise of development opportunities.

Here is a set of questions to get you thinking about strengths-based talent management systems:

1. If you are in a leadership position, have you helped those working with you to clearly  get in touch with their strengths so you all know what they are in the first place?
2. Where possible, are you designing individual jobs to maximize the use of a person's strengths?
3. Does your succession planning system try to match a person's competencies and "personality profiles" to the specific strategic goals your company needs to execute upon. One size executives for one size roles does not hold water anymore. Different strategic priorities require different sorts of leaders.
4. Does your performance management/developmental planning process focus on fixing weaknesses (e.g. you need to be better at this) or maximizing strengths (you are really good at this, how can we make you even better)
5. When you design a leadership curriculum is it around a needs analysis that gives priorities to group deficiencies? Are you trying to make poor coaches into better coaches or good coaches into excellent coaches?

It really hit home to me that our talent management systems are unfavorably balanced on the side of fix -it. Perhaps a real change would be welcomed by the workforce—drive higher levels of engagements in tough times, and ultimately drive the performance of our organizations.

Rich Wellins is senior vice president at Development Dimensions International (DDI).

Talent is the Strategy

By Victor L. Magdaraog

Fade in

In the beginning there was a person.  He was an entrepreneur named Talent. He had an idea. Despite the odds he plodded on until others believed in him. He converted his idea into something tangible. He created value for others and they loved him. More and more were happy with his idea. The idea grew and expanded and Talent needed help, so he created a firm. 

Fade out.

In recent years, companies struggled with defining how to make their organization’s talent agenda more strategic. Leadership pipelines, succession planning, analytics, workforce development, engagement—all these were conceived and designed to get the talent agenda to the board room. Some firms realized it was the right thing to do and simply put the talent agenda in the boardroom even if they were not sure why. They just knew intuitively that it belonged there somehow.

Others called for alignment with business strategies. But this fell short of making talent truly strategic: most saw “alignment” as merely attaching the talent strategy as an appendix of the business strategy. In most cases, this was because the strategy planning process followed models that looked at externalities to craft the business strategy: competition, suppliers, customers, new entrants, industry configuration and the like. 

Where was talent? Oh, it’s part of the organization. Talent was an internal piece; it was only an afterthought in strategy formulation.

Rewind.

Didn't we start with Talent in the first place? Think about it, do strategies create talent, or does good talent create excellent strategies? Where do strategies come from? The traditional view is to look at external factors, craft the strategy, then mobilize resources including talent. But firms still generate weak strategies and execute poorly.

Maybe the way to look at this is to start with talent. Paul Romer, an economist, suggests that there are new factors of production—people, ideas and things.  Translation: Talent, ideas, and organizations. Come to think of it, business strategies do not create talent, good talent create excellent strategies! Much in the same way as organizations don't learn, people do. Look at the great firms around you.

Look closer.

Zoom in.

Talent is the strategy!

Victor L. Magdaraog is a Vice President with Development Dimensions International (DDI) in the Philippines

Defining Done

By Barry Stern, Ph.D.

 For about the past six months, my newfound friend and colleague Russ has an out of office message that simply says "define done."  Easy for HIM to say. Pretty much impossible for me to do, even when I'm mowing the lawn.  In two words Russ has captured one component of my lifelong struggle. I've never been very good at finishing.  It’s rare that anything I touch really seems done. When I write a sentence I can always tweak it. Is the split infinitive bothering me today?  Why did it bother me yesterday but not today? Can it be said in a more parsimonious way?  My life and my career seem to exist in shades of gray.  I envy those decisive people who just seem to know when something is "finished".  Their world, so black and white, so clean.

Perhaps Russ' question is borne from his IT/software background.  I have been surfing the net and found that one possible definition of done in the world of agile software development is that "a feature is implemented, reviewed, and unit tested, but not necessarily documented". 

Ubiquitous communication options and the liquidity of words has made defining done even more challenging. When am I done with participating in the never-ending email thread du jour?  I want to be "first out" or "never in".  More pervasively,  I notice nobody "writes" formal communications any more.  Now we "craft" them, which yet somehow elevates to new heights of verbosity and self absorption.  We are drowning in a world of crafted bits.

What about HR professionals? How do we define done as we develop people? Do our definitions of done limit those who can fly so much higher?  Or place too many undeserving artificial ceilings on folks? Are we really taking the time to systematically identify their apogees?  Can we ever say that a person has been developed, reviewed and unit tested?

How do you "define done" in your work?  When you deftly design that onboarding  experience for your new employees?  When you develop your new competency model?  Do others agree it's done? How are your definitions of done in fact defining you and your body of work to yourself and others?

Rather arbitrarily, I guess I'll stop here.

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

Slouching Towards New Normal

By Barry Stern

Lately I’ve been obsessing about the power of culture to determine individual action. This has been less of an intellectual exploration than a personal one resulting from experiencing various cultures marking my personal journeys nowadays. In fact, I write once again from Dubai, the Middle Eastern summer desert heat forcing a consciousness about how to get the few blocks from hotel to office tower in a halfway presentable state.

My belief is that despite crafted marketing and employee communications to the contrary, many organizations treat culture as we did air quality in the carefree pre-global warming days. We’re alive because it’s there, we measure it just to be sure, but we don’t really understand it that pervasively or believe we need to do too much to change its make-up. In fact, our dirty secret is its better if it doesn’t change too much.

Yes, I’m well aware that many of us have engagement, cultural and pulse surveys galore. And I have yet to find the CEO that considers a revisiting and revamping of culture undiscussible. But the power of information or intent is only released through action and it is in action I fear we fall way short.

We do take halting, expensive steps. One executive recently confided to me his company’s new found success in attracting a bevy of individuals selected for “new normal.” However, since the current culture and systems went under examined and little thought given to how new normal behaviors would be supported, just a few months later only a small percentage remained. In fact, this is fairly typical. Based on data from a recent Recruiting Roundtable study, there’s a 50/50 shot that, mere months after a hiring decision, either a hiring manager or the new employee will experience “recruiting remorse.” Surely a significant percentage of this can be explained by the desperate motivations of an underemployed workforce amplified by an organizational failure to take into consideration the impact of current realities upon employees selected with a critical eye only towards the future.

So have the courage to ask:

• Do your senior executives, despite the data they have, fail to recognize the cultural air deep in your organizational lungs and likely to remain?
• What degree of alignment with the aspirational culture do recruiting practices have?
• How robustly has your organization defined the success profile of individuals needed to bridge the gap between the aspirational culture and the spirit-crushing realities of the current one? Does that profile include the personal characteristics, motivations, and resiliency necessary to survive in both?
• What are the purposeful reinforcements you provide for those more aligned with culture you are trying to create than with your current one? How are you insulating them from “oldthink”?

But most importantly, look in the mirror and ask yourself if you are willing to deal with the implications of your answers. Those of us who will be most effective are the ones who have the courage, skills, and yes the risk tolerance to deal with the answers.

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