Who's who?

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.

What is talent?

We often refer to people as talented, but we don't specify the context. I may have some talent in a very specific area of HR after doing it for 25 years, but I'm not very talented on the golf course.

So when we talk about "talent", what we are talking about is the fit between a person and context they are operating in. Everyone will operate better in one context than another. The role of HR is to maximize that fit as both the person and the context continually change.

The Who Questions of Talent Identification

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

• Who should we hire? Who has the skills, experience and attributes to be effective in position X.
• Who are our future leaders? Who could we develop to do something they aren't currently doing?
• Who has scarce skills? Who knows how to do things that most people don't?
• Who has emerging skills that will help us adapt to the future? Who has the skills that will be required to operate in an environment that is not like our current one?
• Who are our high potentials? Who would be capable of making a successful transitions to a more complex level of work faster than the average person?

What all of these questions have in common is the need to identify a person's talent and a contexts' requirements.

Fast and accurate answers to the who questions

The aim of this series of articles is to help HR, the custodians of the who questions, to build a capability that allows them to answer these questions faster and more accurately than the business leaders asking them. Everyone has an opinion, to be respected you need facts, fast.

Building this capability requires 4 enablers.

1. Good quality data: Unfortunately people data is usually not good quality (accurate, complete, current, accessible). However the starting point is knowing what data is relevant. If you ask for what data HR want, you end up with 100+ data points. Think about the consequences of data management for a minute. 100 people, 100 data points = 10,000 data points to manage. 100 people, 20 key data points = 2000 data points, still a lot, but a 80% less. The question is the least amount of data we NEED to answer the most important who questions?
2. Efficient processes: The eye-roll is the most common reaction to HR asking for time to "do people stuff". We all have an instinctual response to being asked to do something: Is what I get from this process > how much time and effort it's going to take. If not, I'm out. When designing processes we need to ask how can we can decrease cost (time/effort) and increase value (usefulness)?
3. Cultural adoption: If you want people to do something, make it easier to do the right thing, and harder to do the wrong thing (The Friction Project - Bob Sutton ). To be clear, the right thing is using an evidence-based approach to talent identification, the wrong thing is guessing and hoping you're right. How do we make it easier/faster to get the right answer to the critical who questions?
4. Embedded technology: The right tools and technology reduce friction in the right areas. Too often technology increases the burden and under delivers on the result. Technology can digitize dysfunctional if the first three enablers are not in place. How do we design technology that it is USABLE (easy to use) and USEFUL (high perceived benefits) so that it is USED (adopted)?

Answering the Talent Identification Who Questions

Answering these questions requires two data sets.

1. Who is the person; 2. Who does the person need to be?

Who is the person?

It's always a good idea to start with the part of the answer that is the most stable. People don't change very quickly, if you want 5 years of experience in marketing, it takes 5 years. If you want someone who is conscientious, that's a big 5 personality trait, it's not going to change very often. So people data is a relatively stable data set once you have it.

What do we really NEED to know about the person?

Behavioral attributes: Approachable people are more suited to sales, detail-oriented people do well in finance. We can all see certain behaviors work better in certain roles. Behavioral attributes can be observed and we all have a different combination of effective and ineffective behaviors.

Technical/Functional skills: I can't work in engineering if I don't have the required knowledge and certifications. Technical proficiency is a "price of admission" requirement in many roles and that proficiency level can vary from beginner to expert.

Experience: We seldom get something right the first time we do it, because as the saying goes "practice makes perfect". We need to know what a person has done so we can compare it to what we are expecting them to do. Experience can be measured by relevance (will it help the person be successful) and depth (have they had enough practice).

Interest: We all do better when we are interested in what we are doing or who we are doing it for. Interest fuels the internal motivation engine that makes us put more discretionary effort into what we are doing.

With these 4 data points we will be able to answer almost any who question we are asked about talent identification, once we know the context.

What is the context?

The context is the "Job-to-done" and the conditions under which the person will do it. What you have to do, and where you have to do it, determine who you have to be.

To answer the who questions we need to match the person to the context, but....

What do we really need to know about the context?

Basically the same things we have to know about the person, but how we get that information is significantly different.

1. Behavioral attributes: Don't ask the business leaders. Firstly, it undermines your credibility because you should know. Secondly, they don't know. They know what success looks like (a great sales person exceeds their target), but they don't know what leads to that. I know a Formula 1 car is fast, but I'm not an engineer who knows why. There is a significant amount of research that can be used to identify the attributes required for success in different contexts, use it so that you become the authority.
2. Technical/Functional skills: This is where you do ask the manager, it's their area of expertise. What skills should someone have, at what level of proficiency and why? It's important to ask the why question to stop the "over-spec'ing" technical skills. Also keep in mind that higher work levels require breadth of knowledge, because the depth should be accessible below. Technical skills are also seldom the differentiators of high performance, even in highly specialized roles.
3. Relevant experience: Experience is about practice, and practice can be generalized and relevant experience can be transferred from one context to another. Define types of experiences, not specific ones, and prioritize the high value ones, i.e. experiences that are difficult to get, e.g. managing a turnaround, or integrating a new technology into an existing process.
4. Interests: What type of people enjoy this type of job? A good example of this is a role that requires an international assignment. Someone might have the attributes, skills and experience, but just not enjoy being out of their comfort zone, or learning about new cultures.

Putting it all together to create a talent identification capability

You're never going to be in a position to answer every who question quickly and accurately, but you can build the capability to answer the critical who questions for your business leaders. Start by compiling your Top 10 list of who questions that you hear most often, check them with your business leaders and then follow these steps:

Create a data platform

• What data would you need to answer your top 10 questions?
• What do you already have? Where is it? Can it be consolidated into one place?
• What will you still need to get? How can you get it? How will you keep it current? How do you make it accessible to the right people?

Design a process

• Who will you need to get the data from? How often will it need to be updated? How can you incentivize people to give it to you?
• What is the most efficient way of collecting, storing, protecting and maintaining it? If you have more than 50 leaders, Excel is not an option.
• How can you maximize the value of the data you have by adopting a reuse, reduce and recycle mindset? Can I reuse this data to answer another question? Can I reduce the amount of data I need to answer the question? Can I combine two data points to get a third?
• How will you visualize and present data in an engaging and insightful way to get people talking? How can you capture those conversations to increase the data you have?
• How can you create a cadence/rhythm to keeping talking about people throughout the year? How do you integrate those conversations into your talent planning process? How do these conversation support your business planning processes?

Create a culture of evidence-based conversations and decision making

• Who needs to talk about who, what, and when? How do you have respectful conversations about people?
• How do build the skills in your HR team to provide evidence-based support to business leaders? How do you train your line managers to ask the right questions and respect the right answers?
• How do you make it hard to go with opinions over evidence? How do you make it easy for business leaders to get the evidence they need to answer their who questions?

Scale with technology

• What is the best way to use technology to scale the right processes, collect the right data and facilitate the right conversations?
• How can technology increase access to the right answers throughout the organization? How do you make it a consumer experience, not an HR one?
• How do you embed upgradeable technology at a reasonable cost? How do you access the skills to manage the technology without increasing your headcount? What is the business case for buying or building your technology solution?

A Summary (TL;DR)

I started this series with who questions related to talent identification because they are the ones we hear business leaders ask most often.

To answer these who questions, you need to build a capability that allows you to do it faster and more accurately than business leaders could do it themselves.

There are 4 enablers to building that capability: Data quality, process efficiency, cultural adoption and scaleable technology.

There are a number of questions you need to ask before setting off on this journey, and like with most trips, the prepared traveller is the happier one.

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.