This is a guest spot for my wife's book on talent management (see the very bottom of the page). There is a clear link between this and corporate governance, which is one of the main subjects of this blog. She argues persuasively that the approach to talent management that she advocates represents a new way of managing organisations. In it everyone is important and talent is nurtured and developed throughout the hierarchy: this is much more than just a focus on recruiting future leaders. The leadership's vision for the business is translated into the capabilities that are needed to achieve its strategies and then line-management focuses on matching the ambitions of their people to these capabilities and offering them the appropriate development opportunities if necessary. This is done through a mixture of training, e-learning, coaching and on-the-job experience: too often HR departments pay insufficient attention to the developmental possibilities of carefully targeted experience but it can be enormously powerful. This approach not only delivers the appropriate capabilities but also improves morale and motivation because it pays attention to the development of everyone, whether they have board potential or whether they have reached their potential but need to keep their skills refreshed.
A useful article on the value of assessment centres is
here.
Open communication both up and down the organisation is fundamental to this approach, which is one of the key factors in good governance.
There is a really interesting consequence of this approach, which is that if Business Strategy needs to be closely integrated with 'joined up' HR policies then the HR function must be moved centre-stage. Instead of being merely a service department to the rest of the organisation it becomes as important as Operations and Marketing and Finance and must have a seat at the 'top table'.
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