Hack:
Start with a better question to create a better talent management system – The Talent Management Cloud

Before I share the details of the Talent Management Cloud, here are a few underlying assumptions.

• Premise #1: The talent management system is bigger than we think and realize (and even if we define it narrowly, it is still a large system operating in the background).
• Premise #2: Each employee has a unique value proposition and the underlying assumptions and conditions change throughout their career (e.g. economy, industry, life stage, interests, past successes, opportunities, organization culture).
• Premise #3: Because the system is bigger than we might think and is ever changing, the greatest risk to our talent management systems is that they become too narrow and process bound.
• Premise #4: We can best design and improve the talent management system through emergence, not reductionism.
  • Emergence: Patterns emerge, arise out of, many simple interconnected parts.
  • Reductionism: We can explain and understand complex systems by looking at their parts.
• Premise #5: Although a broad, holistic model of talent management might seem harder to define and manage, using this approach will offer simpler ways to affect positive changes.

Solution: Instead of the HR sub-set model of talent management, here is a flexible and emergent design called the Talent Management Cloud.

The Talent Management Cloud

Definition: The term “cloud,” as used here, means a collection of particles.

The Talent Management Cloud (TMC) is an evolving repository of practices, beliefs or frames (all called “pieces”) that impact whether employees stay or go and how they develop and grow. The cloud is a place from which pieces are pulled into a picture and plan for improving talent management. Each piece includes several levels of information including a title phrase, description, definition of success, interdependencies (how one piece affects another) and cultivating habits. The TMC contains dozens of pieces.

Each piece tells a part of a story.

Here is a bit more about the overall idea.

TMC – Enterprise: On the enterprise or divisional level, the TMC is used to create rolling two-year talent management plans. Using employee survey data, pulse checks, HR data, organizational performance measures, manager input, employee feedback, and environmental scans, the senior team selects a small number of pieces that represent the practices, beliefs and frames that are most impacting why THEIR employees stay or go, develop and grow.
•    They create strategic and operating plans to build on their strengths and reduce issues related to these pieces.
•    Ownership is assigned to individual projects, measures, and initiatives, but the senior team retains overall ownership of the system and its performance.
•    Training plans and talent assessments are aligned to support the selected pieces.
•    The plan is updated at least yearly, and is a rolling plan for 2-3 years out. Pieces change as needed, but many will likely remain for several planning cycles.
•    If supervisory leadership or support are seen as talent management barriers, a high priority should be put on solving this issue quickly because if employees don’t feel comfortable working for their managers, they will not likely stay and grow (all roads lead to Rome).

TMC – Individual: At least quarterly, individuals discuss their development plans with their managers. They go to the TMC and identify pieces that will best help them stay and grow, and any potential issues that might make them stall or go. This exploration gets turned into a rolling development plan.

How the Talent Management Cloud works:

Let’s dig a bit deeper now into how the TMC is set up and used and how it changes workplace practices and outcomes. Specifically:

• How to build the cloud and system.
• How it is used and who owns system elements.
• What it looks like in practice. How it changes leadership, management and human resources. What individuals experience as a result of the TMC.
• How it remains relevant.

Cloud Formations – Creating Your Cloud

Perfection is not the goal, here. The TMC can and should be continually tuned so that it is a good representation of the most important impacts that your employees are experiencing or considering regarding whether they stay or go, and develop or stagnate.

1. You likely already have a lot of the information you need to determine the pieces that make up your cloud. To start, ask the following questions:

• What are our employee engagement surveys telling us about what employees most value about the work environment and areas of dissatisfaction?
• What might our turnover patterns tell us about why employees leave?
• What reputation does our leadership and management team have in the organization? What are the indications or signs within the organization that might tell us this?
• What feedback have we received from employees that might tell us more about why they stay or go, and grow or stagnate?
• What’s going on in the environment (market, economy, region, professions, internal/external brand changes) that is affecting how people define career success?
• Here is what research is telling us about why employees stay or go, grow or stagnate. Which of these impacts would be near the top of the list for our organization? To assemble this information (you can start with my reference list), periodically review relevant publications (like the Journal of Management and Journal of Applied Social Psychology) and search under the “Scholar” Google tab, narrowing your search by year since publication (I use “since 2006”). Sage Publications is also a great place to search for recent studies (http://www.sagepub.com).
• Here are the reasons employees in other organizations rank their workplaces as best. Which of these conditions do we think our employees value and which do we provide? (Select information from national, regional, or industry specific “Best of” awards, here are a few links to get you started)
  • http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/bestcompanies/2010/full_list/index.html
  • http://www.greatplacetowork.com/what_we_do/lists-us-sme.htm
  • http://bestplacestowork.org/BPTW/rankings/
  • Search “best places to work” then your city/industry
• Based on our responses to these questions what do we think belongs in the TMC? Create a top 10-15 list with some indication of whether each impact is currently a source of strength or concern. Here’s an example list:
  • Rate of change – positive to a point, then negative, hard to cope
  • Innovation – employees love being a part of creating something new
  • Management relationships – currently a mixed bag
  • Our market leadership – it is important to employees that we are considered world class
  • Work load – this is a negative for many
  • Culture embeddedness and fit – employees who feel like insiders do well, those that don’t, struggle
  • Compensation – currently a mixed bag, some concerns about market competitiveness
  • Technology – currently a source of frustration for many
  • Opportunities for growth – a huge plus for many, but our career paths many not serve whole employee segments, not flexible enough
  • Trust in and visibility with senior leadership – strength

Gather a small group of leaders together and ask these questions. You will know more than you realize and will find a lot of agreement. Notice any patterns that emerge from these discussions as they may be fundamental or underlying impacts related to several pieces (for example, strong relationships might be an undercurrent). This initial process can be roughed out in a 3-4 hour meeting if you send the questions and links out ahead of time. Remember, you do not need to quibble over the list yet as this is a first cut and you will fine tune the pieces in your TMC regularly.

2. Validate your initial list by sharing it with others and seeking feedback.

3. Build out the cloud. As I mentioned above, each piece within your cloud should be explained so that leaders, managers, human resources professionals, and employees know how to build and reinforce strengths, solve problems, and remove barriers. The TMC is not just a list of what most impacts retention and development, it offers a useful reference that will help you align practices and initiatives and improve your talent management system. For each piece within your draft TMC, describe:

• Title phrase - The 10-second elevator “what” statement.
• Behavioral description – What does it look or feel like from the employees’ perspectives?
• Definition of success – What is your goal relative to this impact that would either give you competitive edge or reduce/eliminate the negative impact it is having on retention and development?
• Interdependencies – What is the relationship between this impact and others? For example, innovation and change are very related. If people are struggling to cope with change but say they value innovation, you might want to understand what it is about change that is stressful or undesirable and the aspects of their daily work that enliven their ability to innovate.
• Cultivating habits – What are the habits and practices related to this impact that we should practice to build our strengths and remove barriers? For example, let’s consider the impact of management. Research shows (our experiences, too) that many of us stay or go because of how we feel about our managers. We know the habits that pull employees in (transparency, connection, likeability, removing barriers/advocacy, positive coaching, etc) and those that drive many away (micromanagement, poor communication, clashes in style, lack of support, etc).

The result of these initial steps is a cloud of well-articulated pieces that answers the questions, “What do we think most impacts retention and development success in this organization?” And, “How do these impacts show up?” A great tool! It might seem like a lot of work to create, but I am going to make the case for doing it.  

• You need to do this for anything you want to see show up in your workplace. Posters on the wall and bound strategic plans reside on the surface. To go from ideas to practices and performance, you need to get to the level of defining and managing actions, beliefs, and interconnectedness.
• The conversations and work that leads up to this point will continue to help clarify and shape the cloud and build useable knowledge for how to improve your talent management system.

Once you have the cloud formed, it is time to use it to create a nimble talent management system.

Cloud to System – Creating your TMC System

The TMC is a repository that you will then use to strengthen your systems. You will throw your cloud into your implementation system to align your intentions with practices and measures. Your implementation system (or systemic engine) includes systemic elements like:

• Decision making practices.
• Roles and structures.
• Performance management.
• Culture.
• Technology.
• Management and leadership practices.
• Processes.
• Defacto processes.
• Communication channels (including the back channel).
• Measures and analysis.
• Change management.

When you want to turn intentions into performance, you will have it show up and be supported by many of these elements. For example, if management is a big impact listed in your cloud and is currently not a competitive strength, you might ask how roles, structures, performance management, communication, and other systemic elements might need to be realigned to best support the desired brand of management.

Let’s assume that talent management is a major strategy within your organization’s plan. To go from cloud to system, do the following:

• Share the contents of your cloud with a group of leaders.
• Describe the implementation system (see attached slides for a visual).
• Facilitate a design discussion where you look at how cloud elements show up in the implementation system and what ought to be realigned. As with your cloud formation exercise, look for patterns that emerge from or connect several systemic elements. For example, role designs affect many systemic elements like culture, decision practices, communication practices, structures, and measures. The way in which your systemic elements are defined and decided might also have emergent properties. I worked with a Fortune 50 company whose systemic elements rose from a tightly controlled and time-honored belief set (which became a systemic element in and of itself). Unfortunately, this same belief set was a barrier to retention and growth of younger professionals.
• Integrate cloud impacts into existing systems as appropriate. For example, how should the pieces in your cloud affect or change how you conduct your succession planning or talent assessment processes? How ought the cloud pieces affect how managers are hired, trained, and evaluated? How does your cloud pieces impact other strategies in your organizational plan?
• Select a focused list of opportunities, initiatives, or projects that have the greatest potential for improving retention and growth. Use good organizational alignment, change management, and project management skills to plan, implement, and measure these initiatives.
• Create a talent management dashboard. Select a few measures that will tell you the most about how you are doing improving the TMC system. For example, you might track:
  • Retention.
  • Change resilience.
  • Managerial trust and reputation.
  • Feelings of progress.
  • Socialization or embeddedness.
  • Job challenge.

Utilize your existing measurement practices where possible (for example, by adding a few questions to your employee engagement survey) or create new ways of defining and determining success. Resist the urge to select measures based on comfort or ease – measuring something harder to pin down like managerial reputation might be the most important assessment you make!

Cloud to System – Individual Development Planning

The TMC can be used to improve your individual development planning processes. Let’s again, compare two questions:

• Typical development planning questions include: What are your career goals and how do you want to grow over the next year? How can you improve your performance and contribution to the team?
• TMC addition: In addition to asking these questions, ask about their retention and growth impacts. What’s most important to you? How do you define career success and how would you like to build on your strengths and talents in the coming year? What changes would increase your satisfaction at work? What habits or new skills might support the contributions you want to make? What are the barriers that most frustrate you and what ideas do you have for how they might be eliminated or reduced?

If you added these questions to the individual development planning process and asked managers and employees to discuss and review then quarterly, imagine what could come from these discussions! In addition, the information from each individual could be rolled up to better inform and reshape the cloud.

Roles and Resources

The talent management system, whether you are using the TMC design or other, ought to be owned by the leadership team. If it remains within the HR department, the risk of the hammer/nail problem is too great.

To help make the creation and use of the TMC a success, you will need to have someone shepherding the process. Depending on your size and needs, this might be a full or partial appointment. I believe this person/people needs to report directly to the leadership team (or matrixed) regarding talent management work.

As objective as we might like to think HR professionals are, when it comes to talent management, it might be hard for them to represent the function with a healthy detachment (passion for the outcome, but detached from particular goals or outcomes). This is not a knock of HR (I consider myself HR), their roles are not designed to be objective or detached. For this reason, talent management team members should report to the senior leader team, as a matrixed individual/group. For practical purposes and as a way to test out this idea, you might try making one of your training and OD professionals a ½ time TMC facilitator, with a matrixed reporting structure back to the senior team.
The function of talent management is to:

• Populate and maintain the Talent Management Cloud.
• Stay current on best practices and pieces that ought to be added to the TMC.
• Facilitate senior leadership team planning and ownership processes related to talent management (guide the work I have just described above).
• Partner with functional or cross-functional teams to facilitate talent management initiatives (read facilitate, not own).
• Coach and mentor individuals and managers to help them create inspiring and effective development plans.
• Measure and report talent management system effectiveness. Be the keeper of the dashboard.

For organizations that currently have HR own the talent management system, you (HR) can make the case for changing the ownership dynamic by suggesting that a separate, but still connected by matrix, program facilitator would help ensure that the organization focus on the most important talent management work (because it WILL cut across many functions, not just HR). Like having checks and balances in accounting and safety operations, having someone answer to the leadership team on the whole system will make it more robust and responsive.

The Vision – What’s on the Horizon When You Use the TMC?

Imagine what it will feel like to create and use the Talent Management Cloud. First, you will be uncovering and discussing what’s really impacting retention and growth. For leaders and HR professionals, these discussions will feel relevant and useful. And when you make decisions about the changes that you will make to better align the TCM system, it will feel satisfying because these changes will likely make a difference.

For employees, living among the TMC should feel connecting. HR sub-set talent management systems often lack alignment and employees don’t feel as though the efforts relate to those things that they care about. And because the system acknowledges that individual priorities and needs change throughout their career, individuals will have an opportunity to be more proactive in their efforts to succeed in their current organization.

Shape-shifting Clouds

The strength of the Talent Management Cloud is that it can be easily maintained to represent the most important impacts to retention and employee growth and succession. Talent management systems should help you retain and grow talent. The practices and strategies that will best support this goal change, and so too should your system.

To quote the legendary Edgar Schein from his book Organizational Psychology, “Man is not only complex, but also highly variable; he has many motives which are arranged in some sort of hierarchy of importance to him, but this hierarchy is subject to change from time to time and situation to situation; furthermore, motives interact and combine into complex motive patterns.” Schein goes on to say that, “As empirical evidence mounts, it is becoming apparent that the frame of reference and value system which will help the manager most in utilizing people effectively is that of science and systems theory.”

The Talent Management Cloud is an emergent systemic approach to building workplaces where employees want to stay and grow. It is a highly imperfect and varying system that has the potential to revolutionize your ability to retain and develop talent.