Matching Talent With Opportunity

September was my favorite month of the year because after all of the different Boy Scout summer camps we went to as a troop, Monday nights was when we would start again on our regular Scout Meetings.  Here, we would have knot tying relays or learn how to identify trees by their leaves or bark. Some days we would learn how to make plaster of paris molds of paw prints found in the mud or sand nearby where we meet as a troop.

One of my favorite weekly skill building sessions was on the subject of hiking and camping. This was the late 60’s and early 70’s when all sorts of revolutionary new equipment was coming into use. First, we learned about nylon back packs with external frames plus hip belts. This was a vast improvement over our canvas packs which dug into our shoulders once loaded.  

Next, we learned about how to wear and buy mountaineering style, vibram soled hiking boots from Europe. Designed for hiking in the Alps, these boots were all leather, tough and offered incredible ankle support. I remember my first pair that I ever owned. Given I have big feet, they were huge. They also were very heavy in weight. They may have been perfect for the Alps but not so practical for hiking in state parks outside Philadelphia. 

Third, we learned about new innovations in camp stoves. Having always cooked over a fire, the arrival of various new camp stoves was very exciting.  Some required bulky propane canisters and others used kerosene. The newest and fanciest ones at the time used white gas. Once we learned about all the different types, we had a contest to see which hiking stove could boil a cup of water the fastest. The stove which used white gas won the contest but it worked like a blow torch and probably would have melted the pot too once the water had boiled away.

However, the biggest event during Monday night Scout meetings was the annual fire building contest. My father, the Scout Master, would drive two stakes in the ground and then tie a piece of string from one stake to the next at the height of his belt buckle. Then every patrol was given one log, one axe, one hatchet and one strike any where match. The goal was to split the log into small enough pieces using the axe and the hatchet and then build a fire that would burn high enough to burn through the string.  The first patrol to do this got bragging rights for an entire year and would be known as the best fire starters in the troop.  It was a big honor that every patrol wanted to have. 

As a patrol leader of the newly formed Intrepid Patrol, an assorted collection of all of the new scouts which did not get absorbed into the other patrols, our first year was a disaster. We were still trying to split the log and build the fire when others burned through the string. Our second year was not much better because we were arguing and interrupting each other instead of listening and working together. 

After the second mess up, we were determined to win during our third year. Every month when we went camping, we would practice.  Sun or rain, in the forest or on the beach, we tried over and over. Our goal was to start strong and then blow away the competition.

Over time, we learned a lot about each other and our patrol. Through multiple "false starts" over many camping trips, we realized that John was good with an ax and could split a log in half very well. He was a junior Davie Crockett. Charlie, on the other hand, loved the hatchet and could bust split wood into very small pieces very fast. Charlie was He-man the Barbarian. Now, Peter was good with a knife and could make a "fuzz stick" in no time flat.  He was the only Scout I ever knew with his own switch blade. And I, being the son of a landscape architect and site engineer, was good at building, lighting and feeding the fire. After a lot of practice, we blew out the competition the third year and won many subsequent years.

The keys to our success in the fire building competition look simple from the outside, but required a ton of work. First, we had to clarify the different roles and make sure we matched them with the right person who was skilled in that particular area. Second, we had to support each other and work as a team rather than argue and criticize each other. Third, we practiced once a month and had to figure out what actually worked well given our skills and talents.  It did not happen all at once, but with discipline and practice it came together over time. 

This summer I wish more groups would recognize that matching talent with opportunity takes time, focus and discipline. It will not happen all at once but the effort is worth the result once it happens. If during the process you learn how to build a good campfire, I suggest you celebrate this accomplishment with some tasty s’mores.

Geery Howe, M.A. Consultant, Executive Coach, Trainer in Leadership, Strategic Planning and Organizational Change Morning Star Associates 319 - 643 - 2257

Some of the Major Problems in Creating Organizational Clarity

Currently the greatest external challenge to most companies is the high degree of strategic ambiguity. More and more organizations are doing a PESTEL analysis, i.e. the study of political, economic, social, technological, environmental, legal trends, and finding too many variables and uncertainties within the service delivery environment. Furthermore, these same companies are finding a lack of strategic clarity within the organization and a lack of strategic flexibility in systems and people also within the company. In short, many companies have discovered that they lack clear systems for managing or creating strategic adaptability. Overwhelmed by the complexity, they also are not proactively creating a system for building and maintaining an adaptive strategy.

From my vantage point, the underlying causes for organizations not being able to build and maintain an adaptive strategy starts first at the senior team level.  More and more of these teams are becoming dysfunctional. Rather than acting like teams, they often default to being senior leader work groups. Built around status and ego with a dash of artificial harmony, these so called teams avoid accountability and show little commitment for holistic strategic success. Furthermore, most are afraid of conflict and only talk about commitment, but show little behaviors related to it.

Second, most of these same organizations and their leaders are showing the hubris born of success, a problem first identified in Jim Collin’s book, How The Mighty Fall and Why Some Companies Never Give In, HarperCollins, 2009. As he writes, “Great enterprises can become insulated by success; accumulated momentum can carry an enterprise forward, for a while, even if leaders make poor decisions or lose discipline. Stage 1 kicks in when people become arrogant, regarding success virtually as an entitlement, and they loose sight of the true underlying factors that created success in the first place.” By neglecting their primary flywheel for success, these leaders allow “what” to replace “why”, not realizing that when the rhetoric of success replaces an understanding of why, there will be a decline in the learning orientation of successful people and the entire company.

Third, these same leaders also lack a clear understanding of the relationship between culture and strategy, resulting in a lack of “institutionalizing” a clear definition of their culture and not leveraging their organizational core values to their competitive advantage. The result is that the company and in particular the senior team tolerate people in management and leadership positions whose behavior is out of alignment with the stated culture, core values and strategy.

While the above is taking place at the senior team and cultural levels, the next challenge for many leaders and their companies is how to successfully capitalize on expansion and growth opportunities. Most think of it as an effort problem when the vast number of problems actually fall into the area of strategic infrastructure to support expansion and growth opportunities. 

As we all know, new innovations compete for company resources, i.e. time, talent, and management attention, with the cash generating projects during any fiscal year. When all of the company’s budget, reporting and management processes are focused on the current fiscal year, they also define the compensation and incentives systems and thus focus everyone on accountability to the current fiscal year’s goals. If people do look ahead during the current fiscal year, they look to R&D and their long range strategic options by reviewing research, data and trends. The result is that any new innovations fall into a Bermuda Triangle where they are considered to a degree strategic but not yet fully implementable because the resources of time, talent and management attention are not fully given to them. In this no man’s land, the “new projects” here fail to be embraced because they can not deliver like the current fiscal year goals and systems. And because they can not show a fast ROI like current fiscal year products and services, they also are then hampered by lack of full operational support. Therefore, the new innovations become “demo bait” for selling more of the current fiscal year projects and services. 

Finally, there is one other problem that is causing many organizations to struggle at this time period. They do not understand the real challenge of talent management and performance management. They consider them to be something different but do not recognize that they are also interconnected. For example, many leaders do not recognize that talent management and development is about preparing an individual for future positions within the company, i.e. building bench strength, while performance management is about managing their current performance as it relates to agreed upon annual goals and 90 day plans. 

Given the aggregate of the aforementioned issues, many organizations need a clear strategic infrastructure which helps them to adapt strategically, manage talent and performance, and prepare for and implement strategic innovation. The sum of the above problems are hampering many organizations who are seeking a better future.

Geery Howe, M.A. Consultant, Executive Coach, Trainer in Leadership, Strategic Planning and Organizational Change Morning Star Associates 319 - 643 - 2257

Talent Management and Preparing For The Future

As the negotiations related to the fiscal cliff take place, numerous companies are reviewing their current strategic plans and exploring a wide variety of contingencies in order to be well prepared for every possibility. One challenge from my vantage point as I listen and participate in these in-depth strategic dialogues is whether or not these same companies have the internal talent to execute each strategy or contingency plan they are exploring. 

Over the decades of doing this work, I have learned that strategies and contingency plans will come and go. Market share and profits will rise and fall. At times this will happen due to factors beyond our control.  But an organization that has a self-renewing team of first-rate leaders will always be prepared for whatever challenges come their way.

However, according to a 2008 study by McKinsey & Company, 59% of senior managers fail to spend enough high-quality time on talent management. As the authors of the report state, “Companies like to promote the idea that employees are the biggest source of competitive advantage, yet the astonishing reality is that most of them are as unprepared for the challenge of finding, motivating and retaining capable workers as they were a decade ago.” As I see it, many companies are eager to be well positioned on the other side of the fiscal cliff, but may not have the intellectual capital to generate sustainable results. 

Russ Banham in his article “Human Capital: Achieving Alignment - How to get your people behind your business objectives” in the November/December 2012 issue of the Chief Executive magazine, writes, “Ensuring that human capital is aligned with business goals - and vice versa - has become critical of late, given the recession’s axe-wielding impact on labor.” With numerous companies worried that they might lose top talent, the challenge is to develop high-performance staff before, during and after the strategy development and implementation process.

Furthermore, with the talent pipeline being squeezed by retiring Boomers and new entrants who may not have all the required skills to meet the coming challenges, this process of talent development and then talent management may not be very easy. One key to solving this problem is to create a culture at the management level which is built on a foundation of constant learning, particularly given the need to stay productive as we move through another period of turbulence and potential chaos. However, we have to accept the fact that 59% of senior managers do not have the time, and I believe, the energy, to focus on talent management.

One unique solution to this problem is to enroll your key people in the 2013 From Vision to Action Leadership Training.  Here they will learn important information about leadership, strategic planning and execution, and organizational change. With new perspectives, understanding, and capacity to execute in these vital areas, senior leadership will have a renewed pipeline of high quality talent, all who will be ready, willing and able to meet the challenges of the coming three years. 

Friday, December 7, is the registration deadline for the 2013 From Vision to Action Leadership Training. If you and/or members of your team want more information about this unique training opportunity, then please click on the following link: http://www.chartyourpath.com/VTA-Leadership-Training.html 

If you and/or members of your team want to register for the 2013 From Vision to Action Leadership Training, then please click on the following link: http://www.chartyourpath.com/pdf/2013-From-Vision-To-Action-Leadership-Training-Regist.pdf. 

With the future being so uncertain, now is the time to get prepared. The From Vision to Action Leadership Training is a good place to start.

Geery Howe, M.A. Consultant, Executive Coach, Trainer in Leadership, Strategic Planning and Organizational Change Morning Star Associates 319 - 643 - 2257

Talent Management

Earlier this week, I wrote about the importance of talent management particularly as we seek to grow our organizations into global companies. Recently, when working on a project related to leadership development, I reviewed my notes from the book by Bill Conaty and Ram Charan called The Talent Masters: Why Smart Leaders Put People Before Numbers, Crown Business, 2010. In this excellent resource, the authors point out that “if businesses managed their money as carelessly as they managed their people, most would be bankrupt.” They further explain that “in the fast-changing global marketplace, the half-life of core competencies grows shorter.... Only one competency lasts. It is the ability to create a steady, self-renewing stream of leaders.”

I agree whole heartedly and believe more and more this fall that talent management must move to the front burner in more and more strategic planning meetings. One way to do this is to embrace the core principles in Conaty and Charan’s book. They are the following:

1. An enlightened leadership team, starting with the CEO who really “gets it” and sees talent development as a competitive advantage.

2. A performance-driven meritocracy, a willingness to differentiate talent based on results as well as the values and behaviors behind those results.

3. Explicit definition and articulation of values, citing strong company beliefs and expected behaviors.

4. Candor and trust, leading to better insights into people’s talents and potential, focusing on development needs to accelerate personal growth.

5. Talent assessment/development systems that have as much rigor and repeatability as systems used for finance and operations.

6. Human resource leaders as business partners and trustee of the talent development system with functional expertise equal to the CFO’s.

7. Investment in continuous learning and improvement to build and continuously update the leadership brand in sync with the changing world.

If you are grooming key people in order to expand their leadership potential for 2013 and beyond, then this is an excellent book to read. 

If you are ready to commit to talent management, then now is an excellent time to sign up those key people to participate in the 2013 From Vision to Action Leadership Training. Here is a link for more information about this unique learning opportunity: http://www.chartyourpath.com/VTA-Leadership-Training.html

If you don’t have time to read the above book, then I encourage you to read the following article by Jay Freeman, Senior Advisor to the Gallup Organization, called “You Don’t Know Where Your Company’s Going” which can be found in their on-line Gallup Business Journal. Here is the link:  http://businessjournal.gallup.com/content/157718/don-know-company-going.aspx 

This is a very good, short article for leaders who want to grow and change their company, i.e. improved performance and profitability.  In order to prevent a “destination disconnect,” a symptom of weak cross-organizational communication, the author maps out a series of steps to create better clarity and focus. I particularly enjoyed his comments about metrics.

Talent management, strategic planning, and organizational communication and clarity are all inter-related. Now is the time to keep learning about how to do them better.

Geery Howe, M.A. Consultant, Executive Coach, Trainer in Leadership, Strategic Planning and Organizational Change Morning Star Associates 319 - 643 - 2257