Co-creating new playbooks @Talent Connect!

I am just sitting at the airport flying home from NY to Dublin after Talent Connect in New York. What an insightful week this was for me! I am so grateful for LinkedIn to bring talent leaders together in this forum to co-create the future of talent together. Thank you LinkedIn!

Here are a few of my insights and highlights:

Talent Connect as a space to LEAD IN COMPLEXITY:

A forum that enables peer to peer conversations and best practice sharing in a time when we do not have a clear blueprint. As Ryan Roslansky was saying in his keynote, the current playbooks are outdated, and we need to create the new playbooks together. This reminds me of a key principle in leading in complexity. Jennifer Garvey Berger talks about the need to run safe to fail experiments and to nudge the system. This is exactly the focus of the conversations I have been having during Talent Connect over the last few days.

Parallel process of disconnection – The need for a systemic view

During the roundtable conversations about “who owns internal mobility” we identified a parallel process both at organisational and at industry level. Within organisations we talk about the need for more alignment across departments to enable an integrated talent ecosystem along the talent lifecycle. A technology solution is needed but currently not available as an end-to-end platform. And at industry level HR Tech companies are mostly focusing on one aspect of the talent ecosystem and are working in silos – leading to a disconnect at the overall industry level. A more systemic approach to HR is needed both within organisations as well as in our wider industry. The session with Josh Bersin on Systemic HR resonated a lot in that context.

Mindset shift about learning – learning as a day-to-day activity

During a panel discussion with Aitor Larrabe from UBS and my colleague Erin Scruggs we talked about the convergence of TA and L&D. During this conversation and many other conversations across the 3 days of TC we learned that employees no longer have time to learn. A mindset shift is needed from learning as a program (that requires time) to learning as a day-to-day activity. For example, every client conversation and every 1:1 with your employee/manager is a learning moment. If we teach people how to reflect after each of these learning moments, we can enable learning that I integrated into everybody’s day to day with little time commitment.

Related to this, I also had the pleasure to host a session on our LinkedIn learning product vision and roadmap with Carrie Bloch and Jill Raines . What excites me most is the launch of “Learning with AI” which truly offers an opportunity for just in time learning . See this article by Josh Bersin as a good summary of what is coming: https://joshbersin.com/2023/10/linkedin-launches-exciting-gen-ai-features-in-recruiter-and-learning/

Agile Teaming & the “Pilot in command” concept introduced by Pfizer

Setting up agile teams with one singe decision maker who is called the pilot in command. This enables agility within the wider organisational system without creating further silos or hierarchies. This role does not have the team members report into them directly, but they are responsible for their performance review for the duration of the project. Thank you to Sherry Cassano for sharing her experience with us!

Internal mobility needs to be owned by the business and sponsored from the top leadership team

During roundtable conversations with Cisco and other talent leaders we discussed the question of who owns internal mobility. What really stood out to me is what Zohra Yafai and Alicia Lopez shared. The process for internal mobility can sit with one team in HR (with TA in Cisco) but the ownership should sit with the business. And without strong sponsorship from the top leadership team, it is not going to create a lasting behaviour and culture change.

Thank you to the meaningful conversations and new connections I made with so many talent leaders. Aitor Larrabe , Alicia Lopez and Zohra Yafai are just a few of the many people I had the pleasure to connect with.

And how wonderful to get the chance to re-connect with former colleagues! Tadgh Bourke it has been a pleasure to meet you again!

And thank you to the many wonderful colleagues I got the chance to work with during this week. Jennifer Shappley , Teuila Hanson , Erin Scruggs , Camila Tartari Kaul , Ben Murphy-Ryan , Rebecca Schnauffer , Jevon Thoresen , Shannon Hardy , Ann Ann Low , .Judy Dutton , Sarah Leydon-Anand , Marc Prager , Tiffany Poeppelman , Amy Contreras , Anne-Marie Griffin , Gia Hughes , Alexis Holoubek , Sabrina Dixon Lucy Wren and many more!