Who knows?

If you haven't read the introduction to "The Question of Who?" series, you can find it here. It's not a requirement for reading this piece.

An Investment Approach to Talent Development

All learning requires an investment, sometimes money, but mostly time and effort. When you take an investment approach to learning, you have to ask the question:

Will benefit I get be greater than the effort I put in?

To answer this question accurately we need to be clear about the amount of effort required and the value of the expected benefits.

The Who Questions of Talent Development

Here are some typical who questions that business leaders ask HR related to talent development:

• Who should we develop as our next generation of leaders?
• Who needs to develop specific skills and/or attributes to perform better in their current role?
• Who would benefit from attending our (limited seat) management development program?
• Who needs to be more learning agile to make a significant transition?
• Who could we put together in a mentor/mentee relationship?

What all of these questions have in common is the need to determine a gap between what someone knows, or can do, and what they will need to do to be successful.

The 4 Drivers of High Returns in Talent Development

Most people involved in managing learning and development will be familiar with Kirkpatricks model of measuring the effectiveness of learning. It relies on measuring reaction (did you like the experience), learning (did you acquire the intended knowledge), behavior change (did you apply it) and results (is there a measurable positive impact).

The reality is that each factor gets increasingly difficult to measure (reaction=easy; results=very hard) but the easier it is to measure, the less value it has. So in the majority of cases, an investment is made, but only the activity is measured.

An alternative approach is to look at 4 factors that drive high returns on learning and manage those using data. The 4 data points are:

1. Need: Does the person really need to develop specific attributes, knowledge or experience? Are they essential for success? Is there an alternative to developing the skills? It makes no sense to invest resources in something that makes no difference.
2. Want: Does the person really want to learn new skills? Are they intrinsically motivated to put the effort in? Do they have the capacity/time right now? The biggest investment in time and effort will be made by the person developing the skills, so they need the energy to sustain that effort.
3. Access: Does the person have access to the resources they need to develop the skills? What is the most effective way of developing these specific skills and attributes? Sending someone on a course, or giving them access to learning content is unlikely to change behavior. Practice and learning from others has a significantly larger impact on skill acquisition.
4. Application: Will the person have an opportunity to practice the skill in the near-term? Will they have a safe space to practice/possibly fail? What support can we put in place to help them increase their proficiency? No one gets it right the first time. The more complex the skill, the more practice is needed to build proficiency.

Answering the Talent Development Who Questions

Just like investing in the stock market, investing in people is like placing a bet. You aren't guaranteed of success, but you can stack the odds in your favor if you can manage the variables (need, want, access and application)

All the talent development questions listed above could be phrased as "who do we invest in and how?" Since we are taking an investment approach to talent development, it makes sense to also make short, medium and long term investments.

The talent horizons framework helps answer the first of the variables.

What and where is the NEED?

Short term investment horizon: If someone lacks a critical skill to get the job done, or has a "deadly" combination of skills (high IQ, low EQ) they will under perform if they don't get the necessary development. There is a NEED to prioritize development that improves current performance first.

Medium term investment horizon: People with scarce technical skills, or individuals in critical positions need to deliver peak performance. There is a NEED to keep their skills current and ensure they have access to the best development resources available.

Longer term investments: Developing the skills needed to prepare for the future requires more time and a sustained effort. There is a NEED to make these investments strategically because the further the payoff, the more uncertain the benefits. As ice hockey legend Wayne Gretzky said you have to: "Skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been." This means investing in people you believe will still be with you in 5 - 7 years, and developing skills that will be needed in 5 - 7 years.

An annual talent review should be the planning process that guides these investment decisions and allocates resources to where they are most needed.

Who really WANTS to develop?

The best way to know if someone really wants to learn something is to ask them a series of questions. Agreeing to learn a new skill is a lot like making a new years resolution, good intention, poor follow through.

The challenge with wanting to do something is that it usually means you can't do something else. If I spend X hours learning something, that's X hours I can't spend with family/playing sports/watching Netflix/socializing with friends.

Before making any investment, it's usually a good idea to do some due diligence. Having a conversation before you commit resources (time/money/effort) will increase the likelihood of making a good investment.

If someone can't answer these questions convincingly, or hasn't really thought them through, it's probably better to delay the investment in their development until they have. I've used the word "change" in the questions because all learning involves change, and that is often what most people don't want to do.

What is the best way to ACCESS learning resources?

Organizations have an obsession with development plans, frequently putting a performance metric in place that rewards individuals or managers for just having development plans. Some even provide a structure, the 70/20/10 approach is very popular (70% experience, 20% social learning and 10% theory or courses) to writing the plan.

We did some research on the effectiveness of these plans for a client who had put in a metric based on completing at least one item in your development plan. 78% of people met the requirement (it was the shortest online course they could take, 15 mins, with no real benefit).

It shouldn't be that difficult to figure out how to develop a new skill. Think about it for a moment, if I asked you to learn to play a guitar (assuming you don't already).

1. Read/watch something: If you've never played a guitar, start by watching the most popular Youtube videos called "Guitar for beginners".
2. Practice: Buy (or ideally rent) yourself a guitar so you can apply some of the things you've seen on Youtube.
3. Form a band: Get together with other people who (hopefully) play better than you and play "Knocking on heavens' door" until the neighbors threaten to call the cops (Yes, I play guitar :).

That is the 70 20 10 approach to learning and the article I've provided the link to explains how to do it correctly.

Talent development should be by design not by default. It's not a compliance driven process, it's not something that happens when you're not working, it's not something that should be done in isolation and measured by answering questions on a computer screen.

It's an interaction process, that starts by creating a relevant knowledge base, speaking to people who do it better than you, and finding opportunities to practice, practice, practice. Which leads to the last driver of value in learning.

Creating a safe space for the APPLICATION of new skills

Not many of us can learn something once and get it right the first time we try. It's often the reason people don't want to learn a new skill because it puts them in the position of a "beginner", which is a nice way of saying you feel like an idiot.

There was some excellent research that investigated the way in which people take feedback depending on their current level of proficiency. If you tell a young child who is learning to play the piano all the things she is doing wrong, they will soon give up. Feedback to beginners needs to focus on the things they are getting right. If you tell a concert pianist how good they are, they may say "thanks" but they are only interested in what they are doing wrong, because they already know how good they are. (listen to the freakonomics podcast "When is a negative a positive")

We need to deliberately create spaces for people who are learning new skills to practice those skills based on their level of proficiency, and then gradually increase the difficulty of execution.

A Summary (TL;DR)

Talent development is an investment, and that investment needs to produce a good return. The best way to ensure a good return is to:

• invest in things that are needed by the organization,
• wanted by the person,
• designed to be effectively accessed and
• given space to be appropriately applied.

Talent development is essential to improving performance, ensuring competitiveness and preparing for the future.

Being able to accurately and quickly answer the critical who questions associated with talent development means having good quality data, implementing efficient talent development processes, creating a culture that values learning and leveraging technology to make good investments.

You can find out more about our approach to helping our clients build the capability to answer their critical who questions on our website.

You can see what a healthy people ecosystems looks like when you get the who questions right by taking our people ecosystem health check.

Or you can share your thoughts and ideas with me [email protected] or on our Linkedin page.