(Published in THT Perscepective, March 9th, 2014)
People are the apex resources of any organizations with unlimited potentiality, flexibility, self-motive, idea, and concept. Some of them or all may demonstrate both high performance and high potential and are known as talent. One of the core functions of business entity is to develop people as talent. Once, renowned management guru Peter F Drucker was invited at ServiceMaster for his advice and counsel on preparing strategic plan and direction. He met the group consisted of board of directors and senior management team. He started off the session with one of his famous questions: what is your business? And he got all different types of responses from the board members and senior officers, however they mostly related with what they did and what generally described by their markets.
After listening for few minutes, Drucker simply said, “You all were wrong. Your business is to develop people. You can’t deliver quality service without talent. Your business is the training and development of people.” Obviously, talent creates the value for distinguished customers and ensures the unique customer experience. Creating customers and retaining them is the religion of all business organization that needs a well-functioning mechanism to develop people as talent.
An individual in an organization-setting can be called as talent, if she possesses competency to accomplish task, committed to perform and simply contribute where and whenever needed. Along with competency, commitment and contribution, she should be compatible (the quality to work in/with team) and congruent (aligned with organization’s DNA, mission, vision, goals and objectives, core values, strategy, culture and the way to reach the destiny). These five attributes are multiplicative, not additive. Perhaps, in the absence of any one – the value for talent equals to zero and the respective organization cannot produce the desired results and also leads to mediocrity.
Developing talent comes under the scope of HR development function; hence, it should have specific strategy to build people. The strategy might be termed as TALENT and can be expanded as Trace (finding the right individual with potential and will), Aspire (energizing her for higher growth need strength), Learn (allowing her to undergo education and experience), Empower (providing opportunity to decide and act), Navigate (placing talent at right job at right time), and Take up (ensuring performance with excellence).
I remember the words of Rubina Chhetri, captain of Nepali Women Cricket Team expressed couple of weeks ago. She requested the Cricket Association of Nepal to provide them with regular training. She added, “We neither need good food, nor better accommodation and all we need is as much training as possible”. Rubina very sensitively recognized her team’s needs to outperform in the days to come. To succeed in hyper-competitive and increasingly complex global economy, there will be no more option to develop talent for delivering results.
The business firm that consistently remain involved in identifying potential, engaging, empowering, and energizing people would survive with sustained economic growth despite of turbulence due to technological advancement, heightened legislation, and changing customer preferences in this war of talent era. Finally, allow me to mention what Jack Welch, former CEO of General Electric stated in his literature, “My main job was developing talent. I was a gardener providing water and other nourishment to our top 750 people. Of course, I had to pull out some weeds, too.” ***
- Bhuwan R Chataut
People are the apex resources of any organizations with unlimited potentiality, flexibility, self-motive, idea, and concept. Some of them or all may demonstrate both high performance and high potential and are known as talent. One of the core functions of business entity is to develop people as talent. Once, renowned management guru Peter F Drucker was invited at ServiceMaster for his advice and counsel on preparing strategic plan and direction. He met the group consisted of board of directors and senior management team. He started off the session with one of his famous questions: what is your business? And he got all different types of responses from the board members and senior officers, however they mostly related with what they did and what generally described by their markets.
After listening for few minutes, Drucker simply said, “You all were wrong. Your business is to develop people. You can’t deliver quality service without talent. Your business is the training and development of people.” Obviously, talent creates the value for distinguished customers and ensures the unique customer experience. Creating customers and retaining them is the religion of all business organization that needs a well-functioning mechanism to develop people as talent.
An individual in an organization-setting can be called as talent, if she possesses competency to accomplish task, committed to perform and simply contribute where and whenever needed. Along with competency, commitment and contribution, she should be compatible (the quality to work in/with team) and congruent (aligned with organization’s DNA, mission, vision, goals and objectives, core values, strategy, culture and the way to reach the destiny). These five attributes are multiplicative, not additive. Perhaps, in the absence of any one – the value for talent equals to zero and the respective organization cannot produce the desired results and also leads to mediocrity.
Developing talent comes under the scope of HR development function; hence, it should have specific strategy to build people. The strategy might be termed as TALENT and can be expanded as Trace (finding the right individual with potential and will), Aspire (energizing her for higher growth need strength), Learn (allowing her to undergo education and experience), Empower (providing opportunity to decide and act), Navigate (placing talent at right job at right time), and Take up (ensuring performance with excellence).
I remember the words of Rubina Chhetri, captain of Nepali Women Cricket Team expressed couple of weeks ago. She requested the Cricket Association of Nepal to provide them with regular training. She added, “We neither need good food, nor better accommodation and all we need is as much training as possible”. Rubina very sensitively recognized her team’s needs to outperform in the days to come. To succeed in hyper-competitive and increasingly complex global economy, there will be no more option to develop talent for delivering results.
The business firm that consistently remain involved in identifying potential, engaging, empowering, and energizing people would survive with sustained economic growth despite of turbulence due to technological advancement, heightened legislation, and changing customer preferences in this war of talent era. Finally, allow me to mention what Jack Welch, former CEO of General Electric stated in his literature, “My main job was developing talent. I was a gardener providing water and other nourishment to our top 750 people. Of course, I had to pull out some weeds, too.” ***
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