Talent Management Systems Drive Talent Hoarding Not Talent Promotion
By Michelle Malay Carter on October 31, 2007
It?is not too much complex work that burns out employees, but rather too much unchallenging work that leaves employees cynical and opting for self-employment.
Most Talent Management Systems are Designed to Hoard Talent, Not Promote It
Unfortunately, when you are under employed but conscientious, most self-interested managers reward you, their diligent, go-to employee,?with more of the same, lower-level work, when what you really need is a promotion.
Why I’m Now a Consultant
Over a decade ago, I told my boss I was bored with my job for months,?while continuing to be?reliable and conscientious, never letting the ball drop.? I made her days easy, and I was naive enough to believe she would advocate for me to higher-level management.
Not only did she not advocate for me, she shielded me from the view of upper management to hoard my talent for her benefit.? What can I say?? Systems drive behavior, and she was working the system.
The day I informed my boss that I was applying for a position in another division and she knew my departure was likely imminent, she all but secured me a major promotion within my current division.
Amazingly, the day before, I was only capable of being her personal lackey, today I was capable of being a Regional Sales Manager.? So in the end, she did the right thing, and today I consider her a friend.? Although I did take the job in the other division.
Talent Management and Succession Planning – The Fox Guarding the Hen House
Until organizational talent systems are designed to ensure more than one set of eyes are focused on employees’ future potential, employees with future potential will be leaving organizations.
I’m OK.? You’re OK.? Let’s fix the system.
Have you ever had a boss who hoarded your talent?
Filed Under Employee Engagement, Executive Leadership, High Potential, Managerial Leadership, Organization Design, Succession Planning, Talent Management | 1 Comment
Succession Planning’s Missing Link – Lunch with Your Boss’s Boss
By Michelle Malay Carter on October 30, 2007
Institutionalizing lunch with the boss’s boss would be to talent management what the Chia Pet was to holiday gift exchanges – an annual, inexpensive, one-size-fits all way to get the job done.
The difficulty in spotting high potentials is that?their managers quite frequently don’t like them which, in turn, steers the manager’s manager’s perception of the high potential toward the negative.
Young, high potentials can be annoying, arrogant, and impulsive because their problem solving capability outweighs their wisdom, but instead of?designing systems to?protect high potentials from themselves, organizations are systematically demonizing the very employees everyone is warring to find.
The reason organizations are feeling the talent crunch is because the internet age has given young, high potentials an alternative to gritting their teeth as they dutifully climb the corporate ladder while everyone calls them names.
Find Hidden?Potential?
A low-tech, lunch with the boss’s boss system would provide high potentials guaranteed face time with the person for whom they might be working if they were promoted, the manager-once-removed.? I suspect managers-once-removed might be pleasantly surprised to find their organizations do have talent – it had simply been masquerading as an attitude problem.
Quite simply, spotting potential and talent development should lie at the feet of the manager-once-removed, not the manager.? Incorporate that concept into your talent management system, and you’ll want to treat me to lunch.
I’m OK.? You’re OK.? Let’s fix the system.
Filed Under Employee Engagement, Executive Leadership, High Potential, Managerial Leadership, Organization Design, Requisite Organization, Succession Planning, Talent Management | 1 Comment
Work Isn’t Stressful; Adapting Is
By Michelle Malay Carter on October 28, 2007
Work is a psychological imperative for humans.? If we are all wired to work, why can?t organizations find or retain talent?? Workers themselves say they leave organizations due to stress, according to a study by Watson Wyatt.
We are?boring our workers away!
Is work inherently stressful?? No, boring work is inherently stressful, and two categories of mismatches make for boring work.
1. Lack of interest in the type of work, e.g. I don?t like numbers or writing or physical work.? I call this a values mismatch.
2. And/or lack of challenge to the work, i.e. it doesn?t require me to apply myself fully.? This is a capability mismatch.
Work – the exercising of jugment and discretion to solve problems and achieve goals
My nine-year-old son received a Webkinz for his birthday.? It is essentially a small stuffed animal with a secret code which unlocks the internet world of Webkinz.? In this world, you adopt your pet and name it. You then spend KinzCash to create a lavish lifestyle for you pet ? custom designed rooms, clothes, furniture.? When your cash runs low, you earn more by competing in arcade games, trivia quizzes or other contests.? If all else fails, your pet can get a job.? (But will he find an engaging job?)
Left to his own devices, my son would work on this site, yes work, for hours.? He uses his judgment and discretion to solve problems and achieve goals.? He must make choices and decide trade offs based on his priorities.
I did not train him.? My son taught himself how to play and collaborates with school mates and friends to learn more.??I do not pay him.? I do not motivate him.? He is enjoying this work because he is interested in it and it challenges him.? No stress here!
What stresses employees is having to be something they are not.?
Asking employees to be engaged in work they find boring will cause stress.? Research shows that 20% of employees are in roles that do not fully challenge them.?? Add to that figure that 39% of employees report to a manager who cannot provide context for them.? This is what causes workplace stress, and why the world?s high potentials are leaving the corporate world to create their own interesting and challenging work.? It’s not that they don’t want to work; it is that they don’t want to work in the oppressive enviroment most organizations represent.
If we had systems in place to better match employees to roles and an understanding of what makes for a mutually beneficial manager-employee relationship, we would suddenly discover a lot of talent within our current organizations.? Employers are simply Looking for Talent in All the Wrong Places.
Filed Under Employee Engagement, Executive Leadership, High Potential, Managerial Leadership, Requisite Organization, Talent Management | 1 Comment
Employees are Babies Throwing Tantrums Says HR, Their Benevolent Caretaker
By Michelle Malay Carter on October 26, 2007
If there are any HR Professional readers in my audience, please fight with me on this one!? Say it isn’t so.
On a post lamenting the fact the HR gets no respect, Karthik raised my blood pressure with the following comment on Gautam Ghosh’s management consulting blog (emphasis mine):
“The employee is to be looked at sometimes as a baby that actually is not sure what it needs; often crying or quarrelling for things it cannot rightfully stake a claim to, expressing dissent at the organization’s policies, questioning parity, fairness & consistency in administration of compensation & benefits practices. That it where the role of a Business HR professional comes in, one has to strike the harmony between being the caretaker/benefactor of the pranky [cranky?]?baby yet intervene and set expectations right when its tantrums get unacceptable. The balancing act actually is between being the employee advocate and corporate’s/management’s representative for policies/decisions.”
Rather than concealing this shameful mindset in a secret HR handshake, it’s actually being exhorted as a “crtical success factor for HR professionals” at HR gatherings in India.
I believe employees do know what they need and it is NOT to be rescued from the policies by HR.? That’s scraping burned toast.? Fix the toaster!!!!? If HR wants to be taken seriously, they need to step up to the plate design integrated people-systems rooted in trust and fairness which function at the hands of the managers.
There wouldn’t be a need for an advocate if organization’s people-systems were sane-making in the first place.?
I’ve got some advice for anyone holding Karthik’s condescending viewpoint:? Get out of the coping and compensating business and get into the designer’s seat.? That’s where you’ll earn some respect.
Filed Under Corporate Values, Employee Engagement, Executive Leadership, Managerial Leadership, Organization Design, Requisite Organization, Talent Management | 2 Comments
Teambuilding – A Friday Funny
By Michelle Malay Carter on October 26, 2007
I can hear the chorus now…
-Been there.?
-Done that.?
-Have the T-shirt.
Gather some team members, click here,?and do some bonding around this 30 second video clip.
Thanks to Frank Roche at KnowHR for the heads up on this one!? In his words, “Friends don’t let friends do teambuilding.”
Filed Under Employee Engagement | 1 Comment
Will Executives Listen to their Employees via Towers Perrin?
By Michelle Malay Carter on October 24, 2007
You’ve heard the phrase, living well is the best revenge?? I must say it does bring a smile to my face when organizations pay me, as an external consultant, several times what I was making as an internal consultant?to say the same things they reviled me for saying while working inside an organization.
In that same vein, Towers Perrin has just released the results of an uber study letting executives know what their own employees have been telling them all along.? Gallup and DDI, as well, find employees singing the same song:?
Employees do not believe their organizations or their senior management are doing enough to help them become fully engaged and contribute to their companies? success.
Just 21% of the employees surveyed around the world are engaged in their work, meaning they?re willing to go the extra mile to help their companies succeed. Fully 38% are partly to fully disengaged. The result is a gap ? which Towers Perrin has dubbed the ?engagement gap? ? between the discretionary effort companies need and people actually want to invest and companies? effectiveness in channeling this effort to enhance performance.
Calling all executives!? Organizational systems are the accountability of executive leadership.? Systems drive behavior.
Remaining unconsciously allegiant?to our culture’s disjointed, Catch-22 views on managerial leadership and organizational design will leave you?continuously rearranging?the chairs on the deck of your corporate ship as?it sinks.? And it leaves 79% of your employees disengaged!?
May I offer an alternative???Suspend your assumptions, set down your defensiveness, and move to curiosity.?? Have the courage to abandon a sinking ship.
Ask yourself, if people really do want to work and give their best, but yet we only have 21% engagement,?does the problem lie?with the people or the systems within which we are asking them to work?
When you are ready to work on systems, I’m ready to work with you.
?I’m OK.? You’re OK.? Let’s fix the system.
Ship image courtesy of the U.S. Navy Naval Historical Center.? As a property of the U.S. federal government, the image is in the public domain.
Filed Under Accountability, Corporate Values, Employee Engagement, Executive Leadership, Managerial Leadership, Organization Design, Requisite Organization, Talent Management | Comments Off on Will Executives Listen to their Employees via Towers Perrin?
Rethinking Accountability – Because the Hog Won’t Butcher Himself
By Michelle Malay Carter on October 23, 2007
The?Nobel prize in economics was just awarded to a team that developed Mechanism Design, i.e. a design for arranging economic interactions so that when everyone behaves in a self-interested manner, the result is something we all like.? This includes the idea of Incentive Compatibility, i.e. the concept that way to get as close as possible to the most efficient economic outcome is to design mechanisms in which everybody does best for themselves by sharing truthfully whatever private information they have.?
I believe Dr. Elliott Jaques? ideas behind accountability and authority within Requisite Organization capture these essential elements within the world of managerial hierarchies.
The Hog Won’t Butcher Himself
I?ve had the pleasure of attending two conferences with Stephen Clement, author of Executive Leadership, a forerunning book to Requisite Organization.? He is a witty, no-nonsense, retired US Army Colonel and management consultant.? Whenever he makes a presentation, you can be sure you?ll hear the phrase, ?The hog won?t butcher himself.?
Demanding employees be accountable for their own output is a little like asking the hog to butcher itself.? If?things aren’t going?well, even due to circumstances out of my control, I might be tempted to lie and/or deny rather than disclose. ?This is the way of most organizations, and pay for performance systems exacerbate this issue.
An Alternate Way of Viewing Accountability
What if employees were not accountable for their output but rather to give their full effort, to give their best advice to their managers, and to stay within policy?? What if accountability for employee output rested with the manager?? And managers were accountable to listen to their employees’?advice, but because the managers were accountable for the output of their employees, they had the ultimate authority to decide whether to follow it our not.
Aligning Accountability and Self-interest
When managers become accountable for the output of their employees, it is in the managers’ self interest to hire well, provide context, give feedback, and ensure employees have resources to get the job done.?
When employees know they will be judged on their effectiveness, not just their numbers, and they will have an opportunity to account for their decisions, it is in the employees’ self interest to seek their manager?s counsel, speak up when they believe something won?t work, give warning when they see a train wreck coming, to ask for the resources necessary to get things done, to collaborate with teammates, and to keep their manager informed about changes in circumstances.
Jaques named his mangerial leadership model Requisite Organization which is about as marketing savvy as the name Mechanism Design.? Name aside, if you want accountability,?you’ll need to?take it off the backs of the employees and assign it with an eye toward?everyone?s self interest.? Maybe more people would be familiar with Jaques?if he had?named his book, Who Moved My Accountability?? Unfortunately, that ship has sailed.
Filed Under Accountability, Corporate Values, Executive Leadership, Managerial Leadership, Requisite Organization, Talent Management | 1 Comment
Talent Management – Finding Our Way without a Map
By Michelle Malay Carter on October 20, 2007
My family will be eating food on a toothpick for breakfast, lunch, and dinner this week, as no one showed at my party last night.? Could it have been the directions?
It seems organizations are having the same issue with Talent Management.? Everyone wants to go there, but without a common language and total-systems model to integrate the pieces, it’s easy to lose people and impossible to get consistent application of processes.? Inconsistency leads to unfairnesss which shoots employee engagement in the foot.
I can’t imagine operating in a world without universal measurements for distance, weight, and temperature, or a common language for direction, colors or?emotions,?but we?are without measurements and common language?in the world of management every day.
There is a way to measure the complexity level of roles and categorize and compare them across divisions, organizations and continents.? And there is a way to judge human potential capability to work at these varying levels of complexity.?? Further, understanding these two elements allows for organizational design that aligns with the work that needs to be done and people’s ability to do it.? It’s a total-system approach.? One employees deserve, and managers will applaud.
I’m OK.? You’re OK.? Let’s fix the system.
Filed Under Employee Engagement, Executive Leadership, Managerial Leadership, Organization Design, Requisite Organization, Talent Management | Comments Off on Talent Management – Finding Our Way without a Map
Party at My House. You’re All Invited.
By Michelle Malay Carter on October 19, 2007
Mission Minded Management?is doing well, and I want to celebrate.?? Stop by tonight for music, food, and gifts.?
I thought I’d pull an “Oprah” and give a car to anyone who shows up.?
Just follow the directions below:
- Drive for a long time on the highway heading toward the sun.
- Exit by the big duck pond.? (Watch for ducks)
- Turn toward the side of your body that contains your heart.
- Drive for as long as it takes to sing “Mary had a Little Lamb” 44 times.
- Stop singing and listen for loud music.
- Follow the music to my house.
When you get here, I’ll? hand you the keys to your new car, and?I’ll explain the meaning of life.? Can’t wait to see you!
Filed Under Organization Design, Talent Management | 3 Comments
Could You Hire This Man?
By Michelle Malay Carter on October 17, 2007
?Imagine?your luck.? Bill Gates has applied for the open project manager position within your division.??
During your interview, he?explains that he’s a little bored with the philanthropic life so he thought he’d head back into the corporate world.? Thrilled with your luck; you ask very?few questions before offering him the job.? You agree to a Monday start date, and whistle a happy tune as you submit his paperwork to HR.
Friday afternoon you get the call.? Mr. Gates is not eligible for the role for which you have hired him.? No college degree.? Find another candidate.
Although you know Bill could run circles around the job, your hands are tied.? You call Bill and tell him the news.? Now that he’s no longer a viable candidate for the role, you ask the question you wanted to ask when he applied for the job in the first place.? Bill, why don’t you go back to Microsoft???
Bill replies, “There aren’t any executive level positions open.? In?my eagerness to?get my head back into the?technology world, I did apply for a Business Manager role back at Microsoft, but they wouldn’t hire me – no degree.”
Have you ever found a perfect candidate and then couldn’t hire him?
Does the tail wag the dog when it comes to hiring decisions in your organization?? Who decided HR is better qualified to define the qualifications for a role than the manager of that role?? If organizations are looking for managers to?be accountable for?their direct reports output,? they must start by giving them the authority to hire whom they choose.
Requiring a college degree is a safe move, but it’s not risk free.
I’m OK.? You’re OK.? Let’s fix the system.
Filed Under Accountability, Corporate Values, Employee Engagement, Executive Leadership, High Potential, Managerial Leadership, Talent Management | 1 Comment
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