60: Talent Troubles: 5 - Lack of focus and know-how around identifying and developing internal high-potential talent
Prakash Baskar
Ex-Chief Data Officer - Transforming companies by developing and enabling intrapreneurs to win with data.
Talent continues to be the critical differentiator determining success with data, digital, and AI initiatives for almost all growth-focused companies. The challenge remains not just around the technology capabilities but also all around.
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"We do not have enough talent at the right levels to enable our transformation agenda" is a common statement from executives. Is that really the case?
Highly successful companies and leaders prioritize talent development and view talent differentiation as a long-term play.
With changing markets and dwindling time windows available to introduce new products and services or improve existing ones by leveraging the latest technology advancements, it takes time to strategically approach talent capabilities of today's needs over the long term. That's understandable.
Additionally, the talent pool's aspirations have changed tremendously over the last few years. Once the most potent motivator for attracting and retaining highly talented individuals, the overall compensation package has lost its hold.
Many other items such as job flexibility, learning and growth potential, brand recognition in the market, technology advancement, the hiring manager's brand, ability to work towards socially impactful causes, and being consistently and creatively challenged have all come into the minds of individuals to determine where they want to work and how long they will stay in a particular role.
What can companies and leaders do to win in this new market?
Build a culture of Intrapreneurship.
Build a culture of Intrapreneurship. Too often, we talk about innovation, but for innovation to thrive, we must enable Intrapreneurship at all levels. Successful Intrapreneurship involves encouraging risk-taking, facilitating open communication, and being open to asking for help and guidance. When companies have a strong presence of intrapreneurs at all levels, innovation comes easily.
But what are some things every executive and functional leader can do to activate and enable this within their teams? Here are twelve ways to identify, develop, and tap into internal high-potential talent.
1. The talent you have is the talent you can work with initially
Every growth and transformation agenda will first raise doubts and questions about talent. Do we have the right people to execute it? Are our teams structured right? There are many options to handle this and possible approaches, but the first realization should be to accept that who we have is who we have initially.
I have encountered a few incoming executives who concluded that most of the existing team would not work for their vision and would not engage well. As a result, they were quick to engage in external hiring or consultant pools with minimal understanding of the current state or current team.
It is important to ask ourselves the following questions: What is the real assessment of our talent pool? Where are the gaps? Which individuals would be a direct fit for where we want to go, and who will need more help?
2. Look within before looking out
Internal mobility and cross-functional talent identification are largely untapped opportunities for identifying excellent talent within companies. No matter which leader spends, it is the company's money. In the area of talent, all available talented individuals must be considered for succession planning and when building new teams for strategic initiatives.
Taking a narrow approach within existing functions and teams means we are leaving out capable, high-potential individuals. These people are already within the company and know the business, systems, processes, and leaders or teams. The learning curve will be shorter, and with sufficient focus, developing and retaining them for the long run is more effortless.
3. Understand your teams and individuals better
Our life situations change, and our aspirations and role willingness will also change.
The stigma around role transitions, such as moving roles to accept lateral positions, step downs, reduced responsibilities, or even going from a team lead to an individual contributor, has drastically come down. People are more willing to step up or down and align their life situation with organizational evolution and needs.
The capabilities of the individuals, their familiarity with the company's products, services, and internal culture, and the deep connections, working relationships, and networks they have built are very valuable assets to lose. We just need to better understand our team members and their working dynamics to promote a culture of work-life integration if we are to retain them.
4. Challenge beyond the comfort zone
A little push into discomfort goes a long way in identifying or creating high-potential talent. Potential by itself is useless unless it is put to good use to generate outstanding outcomes. And the potential must be continuously expanded. While some individuals can push themselves to go after challenging, complex, chaotic, or opportunistic projects, situations, or timelines, others must be pushed.
However, leaders must be self-aware of when the push becomes a shove. We do not want to create chaos, burnout, or constant churn but must enable an environment where individuals can consistently extend beyond their comfort zones. It is also crucial to remember that every individual's comfort zone is different, and accordingly, the approach, intensity, and process should be customized to each high-potential individual we are seeking to develop.
5. Focus on continuous, multi-source feedback
Annual performance reviews exist for administrative reasons and as a pre-step to document compensation and promotion decisions. However, to truly develop individuals, instilling a process of continuous multi-source feedback works wonders.
As organizations get flatter and matrixed, with complex transformation projects and programs drawing talent specialized talent across the business functions, the people directly working on the initiatives as part of these teams are better aligned to provide candid feedback on individuals than just the person's manager or team leaders.
Getting multiple and continuous feedback also helps the individual do more of what they do better and course correct sooner on items that need to be improved rather than waiting until the end of the year. The result is a cohesive team that can work better and grow faster to enable greater results.
6. Increase internal support system
After we have designed the talent ecosystem to gain feedback, the next step must be to align adequate support for the individuals. Peer support is increasingly becoming a core aspect of talent development.
But we cannot always discuss our challenges in depth with our fellow workers. This is where encouraging cross-department peer learning and informal coaching will help. For that to really work, a level of openness and vulnerability is needed.
This is best left to the individuals to decide who they want to engage and gain internal support instead of pushing as a company mandate. The critical aspect is to ensure that the individuals know about this option to develop their support network. It always helps to add a formal mentoring and coaching support system where the confidentiality of the discussions would never be compromised, and those seeking inputs would not be punished for their willingness to ask questions and clarify their weaknesses.
7. Take a hard look at the existing internal processes or expectations
If we must create new ways to engage and develop existing internal talent, we must actively revisit existing processes and diligently remove any hard-line rules, restrictions, and limitations around how we can organize, move around, assess performance, offer training, promote, and reward the individuals who are delivering outstanding results.
I have encountered numerous rigid HR policies that restrict or completely prevent internal mobility, temporary cross-functional talent loaning, revising compensation and bonus structures, providing training, or reallocating individuals across teams.
Your available talent is the entire talent pool, including both employees and consultants/contractors currently engaged. While the nature of the employment relationship will prevent certain aspects of challenging or revising the existing processes and procedures, leaders must strive to enable greater productivity, efficiency, and collaborative success by identifying and ruthlessly eliminating pointless procedures that create friction, slowness, or lower results.
8. Refine, Retrain, Reassign, and only after that, Reduce
We can be more responsible leaders if we engage, train, and develop internal talent. Macroeconomic shifts, geopolitical changes, technological evolution, and market fluctuations can affect every company and leader. Unfortunately, every level of the organization across companies has been impacted, resulting in a workforce reduction.
But if we consistently and proactively refine our talent pool by developing, coaching, and mentoring, retraining where necessary and possible, and reassigning the high-performing individuals to where there are challenges and opportunities across the company through active mobility programs, then handling reduction would not be a painful exercise.
For-profit companies will still have to make hard decisions for their survival in difficult times, but those decisions would be the last option, knowing that, as a company and leadership team, we have done most things possible in our capacity.
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9. Build parallel teams with external help to reorient internal talent
Sometimes, change is challenging. It is even more complicated when you want to pivot and reorient to maximize the tech and process evolution opportunities or face significant market and customer expectations changes. Our existing teams may not be fully there to handle that change.
It is crucial to support the internal talent with the right external talent during those times. Instead of signing up with big-name firms, find out what type of differentiated talent you can bring to enable fast growth of your team members while being able to deliver on critical projects. Then, when a level of internal capabilities is built, you can turn the external consulting team into an advisory function and terminate the engagement when your internal leaders are ready to take it forward.
Building parallel teams will also help move some of your high-potentials into the newly formed team, eliminating any bad practices constructed over time. The learning speeds up, and now, with the slightly excess capacity, you can repurpose or release the talent from your current teams who would not have a place in your future state.
10. Enable internal talent with leader-doer consultants
This is a variation of the parallel team approach. Instead of setting up a completely separate stream, injecting leader-doer consultants will mean that your team members have access to leaders working alongside them, who can also provide valuable feedback and grow your high-potential talent.
The question is, how do we find such leader-doers? The best leaders in our companies are usually extremely busy and have responsibilities for large teams and budgets. However, to be able to advise, guide, and develop high-potentials, it is better to have people with field-tested know-how and hands-on leadership experience.
With the current trends in global talent options with remote work and the gig economy becoming prominent, there is an excellent opportunity for companies to find leaders who are now willing to work at leader-doer levels. Many former leaders are transitioning into fractional and doer roles, but they have immense experience leading teams and functions.
This is the exact reason why I started Khyanafi. After a corporate career that spanned leadership, strategy, tech, and data, my team and I now enable rapid results with ease and certainty for CXOs and leaders like yourself by engaging former corporate leaders who partner as leader-doer consultants. We call this Corpsulting?.
If you want to deliver more significant outcomes with ease and certainty while developing your high-potential talent to be a next-level leader, contact me for more information or email us [email protected]?to accelerate your company's growth and transformation.
11. Align advisory help to accelerate growth
Every company is now a data and digital firm that must leverage cloud platforms, use meaningful analytics, and embrace AI to grow and transform the business successfully and consistently.
While it has become increasingly easier to start and innovate products and services on the cloud, there is an increased need to align business priorities, leadership capabilities, and agile practices with the potential offered by the new-age tech evolution.
Multidisciplinary challenges and opportunities cannot be handled through single-threaded expertise. Creating the proper support structure for your high-potential talent to thrive is essential to enabling their rapid growth into high-performing doers and leaders.
Engaging an experienced team of advisors who can work guide the learning, development, and work of your internal teams is another way to get that leap in success with greater certainty. You do not want to leave this to chance, as this development and growth must happen through choice.
12. Don't wait for resignations and then extend a counter-offer
When the situation reached the point of having an exit interview, we had already lost many golden opportunities to check in, develop, encourage, coach, and retain that talented individual. Many companies come back with a counter-offer when a person resigns, and there could not be a more pointless activity than that.
When your high-potential talent resigns due to dissatisfaction, it is too late. If any other ideas discussed in this list had been implemented, things would not have gotten to this stage.
We must also remember that good talent will seek out other opportunities when they have hit a plateau in their career, want to explore working in other exciting areas, or want a change of scenery by working with another team, line of business, technology stack, a different manager, or another company in the same or other industry.
Except for the last case, where a new company or industry is the trigger, everything else could have been addressed if the leadership had acted on time by having frequent conversations and check-ins.
What about talent at leadership levels?
Do you think your team needs more leadership talent? Consider individuals at your second level and below.
It's a natural tendency to concentrate on our direct reports, but this can result in missed chances for growth and development, especially for those below the first level.
By expanding our focus, we can unlock potential and create opportunities for advancement.
By focusing on just the direct reports, leaders miss an excellent opportunity to identify high-potentials within their organizations and develop their leadership bench strength. One-off skip-level meetings don't work if we want to discover our teams' hidden gems.
In that case, we need to make a more coordinated effort to understand these individuals and enable them with additional learning, coaching, mentoring, and exposure through special projects and challenging work.
I am not saying your direct reports hide their high potential (though this may be true in some situations). Most leaders are involved in delivering results from the projects they are working on, and it is easier to get buried in day-to-day execution.
Talent development and growth of aspiring and rising leadership talent must be taken seriously, but they must also be a conscious effort through continuous engagement and support. Unfortunately, everyone is busy, and development is often left to chance.
When a leadership need arises during a crisis or new opportunity, most teams are left to look to hiring from outside through long-drawn and expensive search and recruitment efforts. In that process, we disappoint and discourage existing high-potentials, leaving them to search for better opportunities elsewhere.
If you are a leader, it is your responsibility to know more about the high-potential individuals on your team, even if they are two or three levels below you. Prioritize their growth. And if that means creating mobility opportunities outside your team and across the company, do that, as good talent must be exposed and encouraged. Do the right thing.
If you need external help to assemble a process and provide ongoing mentoring/coaching, please get that help. It will be cheaper to do that than to lose out on talent you already have.
In Closing
Developing internal high-potential high-performers takes commitment and willingness at several leadership levels and across the company.
Business and technology leaders cannot outsource this important work to HR leaders. Often, HR training is generic and does not address the needs of the organization at the ground level. Moreover, consistent development and growth occur during the course of work, not much in training rooms.
I have covered 12 ways in which you can overcome the issues associated with a lack of focus and know-how around identifying and developing internal high-potential talent. Try them and pick a few that are relevant to your company, leadership style, and situations.
If you need help expanding on these ideas to specific areas and implementing them successfully, reach out through a direct message or email [email protected]
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