The Talent Powered Organization: Strategies for Globalization, Talent Management and High Performance [Hardcover]

 

 

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Although by three Accenture executives and informed by their experiences there, this is not promotional material for Accenture: it has general value. Not that you may not want to contact Accenture after reading it (or that you may not want to work for Accenture after reading it), but it's a useful, comprehensive guide to the challenges globalization has rapidly introduced for corporations employing knowledge workers.

Although non-executive knowledge workers (the "talent") may find some value in this book, it is not targeted to them.

Want them smart and productive? Global competition will increasingly demand them smarter and more productive while making them harder to attract. Want them affordable? Global competition will increasing challenge your ability to keep their costs down. Want enough of them? Global competition will increasingly frustrate you. If you aren't as savvy as possible, your competition will be hiring the people you need ... including perhaps many now working for you.

This survey of the issues globalization brings seems to also contain enough useful details to make it worthwhile for some of those details alone. Do you provide rotating mentors to your programmers as Microsoft does? Provide a way for your employees to continuously share performance concerns instead of just in an annual review?

There's an entire chapter on engagement, something many companies stuck in old style thinking may not realize the importance of. Something Google and Yahoo are expert in (not that Google stock options haven't helped) Can you tap into the initiative of your knowledge workers? Leverage talents you may not even know they have? Give them the freedom to run while nevertheless planning and achieving corporate goals?

Do you realize the importance of your line managers? They are, after all, the ones closest to the majority of your knowledge workers. It's the line managers who can bring out the best in your people and they and those workers need time and nurturing.

That the authors, Accenture executives, understand in such detail, the value of human capital, impressed me. I suppose it is precisely why Accenture makes money. The authors suggest finding new ways to value your people rather than standard accounting might provide: something better than laying off people whose salary reaches a certain level without recognizing that they just might be outstanding performers. The authors also seem genuinely concerned about burnout among the troops and about the real value of ongoing training, something Accenture apparently really practices. Hopefully that's substantive training and not a two hour online class on using Microsoft Excel once a quarter.

I read that Accenture has, at the moment, more employees in India than in the U.S. But if the authors are reflective of Accenture, it may be worth seeing what U.S. opportunities they have...while they last. Meanwhile, if one is a "grunt" knowledge worker, one may want to wait until enough executives have read this book and find a job that offers the kind of engagement the authors' speak of. All this depending on whether one is talented enough ... and affordable enough. Neither workers or employers know what the demand will be like even a few years from now, which is all the more reason this book may be useful to executives.

You don't need to be a genius to figure out that your company's performance depends on your employees. But Peter Cheese, Robert J. Thomas and Elizabeth Craig maintain that having the right people is only part of the formula for achieving organizational affluence. They say good companies know how to get the most from their talented people and keep them motivated. The authors discuss the pivotal role of line managers in employee retention, performance and job satisifcation. They offer a thoughtful overview (if less generally original content) covering new findings in the field, including solid case histories and analyses of recent surveys and polls. getAbstract believes managers will find value in this thorough exposition of how to recruit, engage, guide and motivate talented staff members.

I cannot recall a prior time in business history when it was more important - and more difficult - than it is today for organizations to hire and then retain the talented and skilled people they need. As the nature and extent of globalization expand and intensify, that challenge becomes even greater...and even more important. Meanwhile, one of several complications is the fact that talent and skill needs continue to change. Hence the increasing need for on-the-job training (or re-training) of those available. As Marshall Goldsmith expresses so well, "What got you here won't get you there." That is as true of companies as it is of individuals.

In the Introduction, Robert Cheese explains that his and his collaborators' direct involvement with clients as well as their extensive research on the issues facing businesses today and the practices they follow have led to several conclusions. "First, the key factor in determining the success of any organization is its ability to use human talent - to discover it, to develop it, to deploy it, motivate and energize it...Second, [because human talent is a productive resource like no other, with a unique capacity to add value to an organization], talent issues need to be handled strategically...Third, the conditions faced by every organization in the search for talent are changing with astonishing rapidity in every part of the world...Fourth, although the modern world tells us repeatedly how vital it is to use talent well, there is precious little guidance on how to do this - particularly on how to do it in an integrated way across a wide range of possible interventions or investments, and how to look at talent more strategically."

There in a proverbial nutshell is why Cheese, Robert Thomas, and Elizabeth Craig wrote this book. They identify and then discuss five "talent imperatives" for a new economic world in Chapter 1, then in succeeding chapters recommend a strategic approach to talent (Chapter 2), suggest how to identify talent (Chapter 3), offer their recommendations for completing the often difficult transition from talent development to talent deployment (Chapter 4), explain what "engagement" means and why it matters (Chapter 5), shift their attention to the challenge of embedding and sustaining talent (Chapter 6), and then in the next and final chapter, Chapter 7, share their thoughts about the "next steps" that need to be taken to become a talent-powered organization.

Of special interest to me is the material they provide in Chapter 6 with regard to measuring process effectiveness. According to Cheese, Thomas, and Craig, "All organizations will say that they have major talent management and development processes in place in some form...The real question again is how effective [the programs] are, and whether they are well designed, well documented and understood (by both the people applying them and the recipients or employees), consistently applied, and effectively integrated with each other. In other words, are the processes institu5tionalized and does the organization have the commitment and ability to perform the processes consistently?" They go on to stress the importance of linkage between investments in people and people development processes, and, business outcomes and performance. Those responsible for performance measurement must have the information they need, a clear sense of how talent leads to value, and adopt an approach to measurement that links talent to value. One of the authors' most important points is that the four components (i.e. strategic objectives, performance drivers, capabilities, and processes) must be not only integrated but also interactive. Hence the importance of a framework that assesses, benchmarks, and determines the nature and extent of these interdependences. In Chapter 6, to Cheese, Thomas, and Craig suggest one framework to consider (i.e. The Human Capital Development Framework or HCDF), explain what it is and what it can do, and provide two mini-case studies, SAP America and Sinclair Knight Merz (SKM), to illustrate potential benefits.

In the last chapter, the authors focus on "next steps" and "the new imperatives," reiterating that (a) talent is the single most important force creating value for any organization and (b) an appropriate strategy is needed to direct and apply that force to maximum benefit. That is indeed a "great challenge" on which senior management in all manner of organizations must focus. Doing so " will go a long way beyond the competitiveness of organizations to become the key issue in competitiveness of nations in the future. Clearly we have only begun to imagine the potential of talent power."

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Those who share my high regard for this book are urged to check out Bradford Smart's Topgrading: How Leading Companies Win by Hiring, Coaching, and Keeping the Best People (Revised and Updated Edition), Dean Spitzer's Transforming Performance Measurement: Rethinking the Way We Measure and Drive Organizational Success as well as Enterprise Architecture as Strategy: Creating a Foundation for Business Execution co-authored by Jeanne W. Ross, Peter Weill, and David Robertson. Justin Menkes' Executive Intelligence: What All Great Leaders Have, Judgment: How Winning Leaders Make Great Calls co-authored by Noel Tichy and Warren Bennis, Ram Charan's Know-How: The 8 Skills That Separate People Who Perform from Those Who Don't, Charles W. Holland's Breakthrough Business Results With MVT: A Fast, Cost-Free, "Secret Weapon" for Boosting Sales, Cutting Expenses, and Improving Any Business Process, and The Workforce Scorecard: Managing Human Capital to Execute Strategy co-authored by Mark Huselid, Brian Becker, and Richard Beatty.

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