Hr Leadership and Talent Management

Different cross-functional HR teams would assign to providing service for each set. By the end of the year MacDonald expected to manage each person under each group as an organizational asset. The asset supposed to be developed according to the needs. MacDonald’s plan was to forecast skills that would be needed by IBM for the next three years according to its business plan and to make inventory on the existing skills. According to his metrics the workforce breakdown could be 22 % of employees who would have obsolete skills within three years. Out of those 22 %, 85 % would have fundamental competencies that would help to gain new skills that would be needed by the company within three years. And the remaining 15 % would be either voluntary or involuntary turnover. The project was criticized for the fact that nobody at IBM would be saved from that obsolete category. All people supposed to be assessed and reassess on their competency level from top to bottom. And then, they would be placed with IBM wherever company needed them: U.S., India, or Middle East.

HRE theoretical approaches in talent management suggest to focusing on helping individuals on performance. The focus should be emphasized on unique talents on the person and on the methods of transforming these talents into stable performance. HR professionals should built up their tools, processes and initiative around abilities to increase employee’s productivity and performance. Work around individual’s strengths should be first priority and manage around his or her weakness and measuring “obsolete skills” should be the second. Evidence suggests that people may have the same job-specific skills but express them differently. This theory is supported by study on successful leaders. No one top executive or organizational leader possessed the skills perfectly matched to the position. Instead, each of them used individual style of leading. As an example, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Abraham Lincoln’s leadership styles could be compared.

Not all behaviors or competencies can be learned. Investing time and money in developing person’s behavior and minimum level of proficiency can be tiring and wasteful. Instead of wasting managers’ time in training employees in behaviors that are non-trainable, HRE theories on talent management suggest focusing on three terms: skills, knowledge, and talent, and how these terms can help managers to improve return on investment (ROI). The most efficient way ROI is to identify individual’s talents and verify what particular knowledge and skills can be added to these talents “to transform them into sustained performance” (Zaplatinskaia, L. 2014).

Zaplatinskaia suggests that investing time and efforts in fixing areas of weakness won’t lead to success. Weakness-fixing approach is preventing failure and only strength-building approach leads to success. Talented Organization doesn’t identify the competency for each job role. It identifies the outcome, expected from each role. It doesn’t select people on required competencies, it detects natural talents that are needed for each job role and designed recruitment, selection, and promotions systems for finding the people with similar talents.

Talented Organization doesn’t measure the required competencies; instead it measures the required outcomes. It doesn’t verify which competency employee lacks; it verifies employee’s areas of talent and non-talent. Talent management doesn’t encourage to improving in areas of non-talent, it encourages strengthening talents with skills and knowledge and find approaches to manage around areas of non-talents. Talented organizations don’t mark employees’ weaknesses as “area for improvement”. They apply these tags to areas of talent. The greatest opportunities of an individual lie in talents and not in weaknesses (Zaplatinskaia, L. 2014).