In his research, "21st-Century Talent Spotting", Claudio Fernández-Aráoz
shares how talent was assessed and placed across different eras. His
conclusion is that in today's day and age, potential to adapt and grow
into complex roles and environments, is the key ability that a CEO or
executive management of a firm should be assessed against. How to
identify potential is what was enticing and I'll expand on it
further.
Ads help us serve our growing community.
Why Potential:
Physical attributes were the key differentiators in the early era,
followed by logical and analytical abilities thorough much of the 20th
century (2nd era), shifting to competency in the latter part of the 20th
century (3rd era) and finally to the 4th era, where potential needs to
become the focus. The reason for this shift is needed because the
environment is volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA), where
competence alone cannot serve as a sufficient measure of success.
Scarcity of talent:
Top talent will further become scarce due to globalization, demographics
and pipelines. As emerging vs mature markets provide the biggest
potential for growth, both of these markets are vying for talent.
All these markets are searching for young leaders between the age of
35-44, yet by 2020 most countries will have workforce exiting due to
hitting the retirement age. Lastly, most firms don't have pipeline to
develop talent for critical roles in management. These external and
internal factors combined will create a huge talent void in the near
future.
How to identify Potential:
Claudio and his colleagues at Egon Zehnder, an executive research have
created a model for assessing potential. It begins with mining the
potential candidates personal and professional history, have open
discussions, perform reference checks and look to identify 5 key
traits.
1. Motivation: It's an unconscious quality, with a fierce commitment to
excel towards unselfish goals.
2. Curiosity: To Learn and Change.
3. Insight: Analyze and extrapolate to find new opportunities.
4. Engagement: Make personal connections and use both logic and emotion
to drive vision.
5. Determination: Pursue challenging tasks and deal with adversities head
on.
Retaining the talent:
An organization need not just find the talent, they also have to take care
of the talent. Autonomy, mastery and purpose and three factors that
energize top talent. Financials also play role, though keep the key talent
energized will drive the talent to stay motivated and sustain their
drives.
From a practical perspective, I would suggest reading the, Tours of duty:
The new employer-employee compact, by Hoffman, Casnocha, & Yeh. To
keep the talent, authors suggest creating a compacts vs contracts with the
talent - at any level vs just focusing on management. They suggest
rotations every two years, something management consulting firms do
effectively. Overall, this does not mean that competence,
experience and performance should be overlooked, rather they should be
viewed in unison with potential.
Ref: Hoffman, R., Casnocha, B., & Yeh, C. (2013). Tours of duty: The
new employer-employee compact. Harvard Business Review, 91(6): 48-58.
Retrieved from
https://hbr.org/2013/06/tours-of-duty-the-new-employer-employee-compact
0 Comments